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Philip Nolan’s Friends 

A Story of the Change of Western 

Empire 


BY 


EDWARD E. HALE 

*» 

Author of 

“A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY,” “ UPS AND DOWNS,” 
“THE BRICK MOON,” AND “ SYBARIS ” 




BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 





Copyright , 1876, 

By Scribner, Armstrong, & Co. 


Copyright , 1899, 

By Little, Brown, and Company. 

Copyright , 1904 , 

By Edward E. Hale. 


^// rights reserved 

' // 


Jlrtat^ra 

8, J. Parkhill <fc Co., Boston, U.S.A. 



Preface 

TO THE EDITION OF 1899 


T HE war with Spain compels us, whether we wish 
to or not, to look back on our early history. 

It compels us to ask why the population of the 
southwestern part of the United States disbelieves 
Spain, distrusts her, and is delighted to make war 
with her. 

As I believe, the cause of this hatred and want of 
confidence is in the history which follows in the 
reader’s hands. In the year 1801, Philip Nolan, a 
citizen of Kentucky, had organized a company of 
nearly twenty Southwestern men to go into Texas on 
a commission from the Spanish Governor of Orleans. 
On the 22d of March, 1801, this same Philip Nolan 
was killed by the Spanish Governor of Texas, who 
knew that he had the pass of the Spanish Governor 
of Orleans. His comrades were taken prisoners, and 
languished in New Mexico for the next ten years. 
In 1807 they were made to throw dice for their lives, 
and Ephraim Blackburn, who threw the lowest cast, 
was taken out and shot. This was done to men who 
were in Texas on their legitimate business, with the 
authority of the King of Spain. 


vi 


Preface 


When, then, in the twenties of this century, pro¬ 
posals were made by one person and another for the 
American colonization of Texas, they came into a 
region where every man knew of this infamous story 
of Spanish dishonor. People who recollect what 
happened at the Alamo and in other parts of Texas, 
in the battles which resulted in Texan independence, 
know how the hatred of Spain was then fostered; and 
it was under such conditions that the massacre of the 
crew of the “ Virginius,” twenty-six years ago, fell on 
sensitive minds among that population. It is in a 
generation afterwards that these people hear the 
stories of the reconcentrados and the other cruelties 
of Weyler. 


In reprinting this story, twenty-three years after it 
was written, it has to me therefore a pathetic interest. 
As I believe, it relates to forgotten events which have 
great importance in view of the recent war. At the 
period when I wrote it, the horrors of the “ Virgin¬ 
ius ” massacre were still fresh, and those words, now 
so instructive, of General Grant, “ If Spain cannot 
redress these outrages, the United States can and 
will.” 

The little world of New England chooses to be 
somewhat surprised with the absolute unanimity of 
feeling in the Southwest that Spain could never be 
trusted. I believe now, as I believed in 1876, that 
the Spanish government laid the foundations for this 
distrust in its infamous conduct regarding Texas 
and the Nolan transaction, for which I have never 
heard any pretence of justification. 



Vll 


Preface 

In the State Department at Washington they have, 
or think they have, but one letter regarding the real 
Philip Nolan. It is the transcript of a letter from 
Mr. Jefferson, asking for information with regard to 
wild horses. The answer to this letter, I think, is in 
the library of the Philosophical Society in Philadel¬ 
phia. The court records of the hearing before Nolan 
crossed the Mississippi on his fatal journey are, I 
suppose, in the records of the United States District 
Court in Mississippi; they were there as late as 1863. 
I have myself the record of the trial of Jesse Cook, 
Antonio Leal, and Francis Peter Jeremiah Longue- 
ville at San Antonio, Texas. They were “ suspected of 
corresponding secretly with the American Mr. Philip 
Nolan.” The date is January 23, 1801. I will take 
some occasion to publish a translation of this curious 
document, made for me by the skill of Judge Emery. 

In the state archives of Texas I found many papers 
bearing on the same enterprise. Mr. Quintero had 
collected many more than I have, and from these he 
favored me with an autograph of the real Philip 
Nolan. There is a poor miniature painting of Nolan, 
painted before he started on his expedition, in the 
possession of my friend Mr. Miner, who is of the 
family of Fanny Lintot, whom Nolan had married 
before this expedition. Nolan never saw his son, who 
was born after his death, as the last chapters of this 
novel show. I am sorry to say that the portrait does 
not quite come up to the character which I have 
drawn of the young adventurer. 

Near the mouth of the James River, there lies the 
body of a colored soldier named Philip Nolan, who 


Vlll 


Preface 


gave his life for his country in the Civil War. He 
belonged to a Louisiana regiment, and I suppose 
that he was born on the plantation of Mr. Miner, and 
received his name from the martyr of Texas. 

In Wilkinson’s correspondence are two or three 
references to Nolan, and it was from this correspond¬ 
ence that I accidentally took his name for the hero 
of “The Man without a Country.” I have no doubt 
that proper investigation of the Spanish documents in 
Mexico, in Monterey, and in Chihuahua, would bring 
up many other details of his adventure. In fact, the 
Spanish were much better informed of his adventure, 
and of Burr’s, than Mr. Jefferson’s government was. 
And if anybody ever chooses to write the history of 
Aaron Burr’s project, — a very tempting subject open 
to somebody who has the historical instinct, — he will 
find more materials in Mexico than he will find in 
the United States. 


Writing in 1876, I did not like to say what I can 
now say of the “ Ransom ” of this book. Ransom 
is described in grateful recollection of Abel Fullum. 
I sometimes call Abel Fullum “ the last of the feudal 
vassals.” He was a retainer in my father’s family 
from the summer of 1820 until he died, on the twenty- 
seventh of December, 1886. I have given some 
notice of the life of this faithful friend of mine in 
“A New England Boyhood,” which will appear in a 
subsequent volume of this series. In the book in 
the reader’s hands I have represented him as well as 



Preface 


IX 


T i could, as he would have lived and moved under the 
circumstances of the story. Writing the story “East 
and West/' some years afterward, I tried again the 
experiment of carrying out his life in that novel, of 
which he is the most important character. It is a 
pleasure to me, writing after his death, to speak with 
gratitude of the services which he rendered to me 
personally for almost seventy years, and of his loyalty, 
his energy, his inborn wisdom, — qualities which 
asserted themselves in the life of a man who had 
next to nothing of the learning of the schools, and 
was almost ostentatiously ignorant on all subjects 
which he had not studied for himself. 


The words which follow were written as a pref¬ 
ace to the original edition, published, as has been 
said, just after the massacre of the crew of the 
“ Virginius.” 

Edward E. Hale. 


Roxbury, July 21, 1899. 






















































Preface 


TO THE FIRST EDITION 

T HE silence of our historians on the subject of the 
annexation of Louisiana to the United States, 
or their indifference, is very curious. It is perhaps 
even necessary to explain to the general reader of 
to-day, that the “ annexation of Louisiana ” was 
the annexation of all that the United States holds 
west of the Mississippi, excepting the province of 
Alaska, and the regions secured by the Mexican 
war and consequent negotiation with Mexico. The 
standard histories, when they speak of the annex¬ 
ation, allude to the final debates in Congress; and 
the history of the negotiation, as given by Marbois, 
the French negotiator, is sometimes condensed. But 
little more is said. Yet it is the annexation of 
Louisiana which makes the United States of to-day 
to be one of the great powers. Without the im¬ 
mense region then known as Louisiana, no Pacific 
coast, no California, — no 4< empire from ocean to 
ocean.” 

I suppose it is safe to say that the Federalists had 
attacked the purchase so eagerly that they were 
afraid their attack would be remembered. Of the 
distinguished Western men, the separate plans had 


xii Preface 

been so diverse, sometimes so treasonable, that their 
representatives have not dwelt much on the story. 
On Mr. Jefferson’s part, I think there was an uneasy 
feeling that the credit was none of his. The truth 
is, that the credit — so far as there is any to be given 
to one man — of this great transaction, which makes 
the United States what it is, is to be given to Napo¬ 
leon Bonaparte. I mean that he originated the plan 
which was carried out, which no one else had pro¬ 
posed ; and he is the only public character, of those 
who had to do with it, who seems to have had, at the 
time, any clear sense of its importance, or of the 
results which would follow. “ I have given England 
her rival.” These were his prophetic words when 
the treaty was concluded. 

The belligerent operations of John Adams’s ad¬ 
ministration are always spoken of by the historians 
as aimed at France. They were so spoken of at the 
time, in print. Twelve regiments of infantry and one 
of cavalry were authorized to serve “ during the con¬ 
tinuance of the existing differences with the French 
republic.” A considerable part of these regiments 
was raised. The recruits—to fight against France — 
were assembled at our ports on the Ohio and Missis¬ 
sippi ; that is, they were removed so far from any 
points where they could be used against France. 
The boats which were to take them down the river, 
to take Orleans, a Spanish post, were built and were 
in readiness. I have read the manuscript corre¬ 
spondence between Hamilton, the acting commander 
of the new army, and Wilkinson, the commander on 
the Ohio, with reference to this proposed attack on 


Xlll 


Preface 

Orleans. Wilkinson himself made a visit to Hamil¬ 
ton, to adjust the details of the campaign. This mine 
was ready to be sprung upon poor Spain, when the 
republic of the United States should make war with 
“the French republic.” 

Two fortunate or unfortunate events, in which the 
War Office has been injured by fire, have destroyed 
many of the documents which once described the 
details of these preparations. In those days govern¬ 
ments did not discount their victories, nor state their 
plans in advance in the journals. And so John 
Adams’s expedition against the Spanish town of 
Orleans goes into history as a part of the “ French 
War.” 

I felt that I owed something to the memory of 
Philip Nolan, whose name I once took unguardedly 
for the name of a hero of my own creation, who was 
supposed to live at another time. The part which 
the real Philip Nolan played in our history is far 
more important than that of many a man who has 
statues raised in his honor. So far as careful work 
among the memorials of his life would serve, I have 
tried to rescue him from the complete oblivion which 
hangs over him. He was murdered by the Spanish 
Government, who dishonored their own passport for 
his murder. Were such an event possible now, war 
within an hour would be the consequence. In the 
recent case of the “ Virginius,” the most angry of 
Cuban sympathizers did not pretend that there had 
been any such violation of the right of nations. But 
Spain was strong then, and Ameriga wag weak, and 
Mr. Jefferson was “ pacific.’’ 



XIV 


Preface 


America is now strong, and Spain is weak, — how 
strong, and how weak, the story of the “ Virginius ” 
showed. If we trace events to their unconscious 
causes, we may say that no single day has done so 
much to make America strong, and to make Spain 
weak, as that day in 1801, when a Spanish officer, 
under his king’s commission, murdered Philip Nolan, 
bearing the same king’s passport for his lawful ad¬ 
venture. 

The documents which illustrate this history, in 
the archives of San Antonio and of Austin, are very 
numerous. To the cordial assistance of the officers 
of every name, who have helped me to find and use 
them, I am greatly indebted. To Mr. Quintero, who 
gave me the full use of his rich collections in the 
archives of Monterey, which I have not visited, I 
have tried to express my obligations. But, indeed, 
I have received so much kind help in the preparation 
of this little book, from a thousand friends in the 
South and West, that I cannot thank them all by 
name. My readers owe it to them, if they gain any 
new light on our history, as they follow the adven¬ 
tures of Philip Nolan’s P'riends. 

Edward E. Hale. 

Roxbury, Nov. 6, 1876. 


The originals of the correspondence between Ham¬ 
ilton and Wilkinson, which I have named above, were 
in Louisville, Kentucky, in April, 1876, and were 
examined by me there. They were the property of 



Preface xv 

a relative of Wilkinson. In preparing these sheets 
for the press, I wrote to Louisville, to obtain the 
privilege of consulting them again. My correspond¬ 
ent, alas, sends me the following reply : — 

“The papers were in the hands of Mr. Bigot, a Frenchman 
of New Orleans, who married a daughter of General Wilkinson. 
Bigot came to Louisville to live. Colonel Durett and Colonel 
John Mason Brown knew him, and tried earnestly but fruitlessly 
to get possession of those most valuable letters. Bigot was 
poor and became constantly poorer. He died suddenly, much 
in debt to his landlord for rent, and to others. The Wilkinson 
papers fell into the landlord’s hands, who took them, with ‘ other 
trash,’ out into the commons, and burnt them! 

“How little did the hungry flames dream of the preciousness 
of the treasures they were consuming ! ” 

Wilkinson had been Gates’s aide at Saratoga, and 
this box contained two autograph notes of General 
Burgoyne in reference to the surrender. 


July 21, 1899. 




























CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

I. A Parting. 3 

II. A Meeting.16 

III. Philip Nolan.27 

IV. “ Show your Passports ! ”.39 

V. Save me from my Friends.52 

VI. Good-by .64 

VII. The San Antonio Road.78 

VIII. The Dressed Day.97 

IX. Talking and Walking.115 

X. Life on the Brassos.134 

XI. Rumors of Wars.146 

XII. “Love waits and weeps”.154 

XIII. Night and Day.172 

XIV. A Packet of Letters.182 

XV. Courts and Camps.192 

XVI. News? What News?.200 

XVII. Mines and Counter-Mines.220 

XVIII. Will Harrod’s Fortunes.228 

XIX. The Warning.238 

XX. A Tertulia.249 

XXL “The Man I hate” .262 

XXII. Battle. 275 

XXIII. At San Antonio.283 

XXIV. “I must go home”.292 

XXV. Countermarch.301 

XXVI. Homeward Bound.314 

XXVII. Home as found.325 

XXVIII. General Bowles.333 






























xviii Contents 

Chapter Page 

XXIX. “Where shall she go?”. . . . 340 

XXX. Mother and Child. 350 

XXXI. On the Plantation.. . 356 

XXXII. The Desolate Home. 363 

XXXIII. Alone . 375 

XXXIV. All will be Well. 387 

XXXV. Savage Life. 397 

XXXVI. In Prison, and ye visited me. 409 

XXXVII. Face to Face. 420 

XXXVIII. What Next?. 434 

XXXIX. A Family Dinner. 457 














PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS 


OR, SHOW YOUR PASSPORTS 




PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS; 


OR, 


SHOW YOUR PASSPORTS 


9 


CHAPTER I 


A PARTING 


“ Oh ! saw ye not fair Inez ? 

She has gone into the West, 


To dazzle when the sun is down. 
And rob the world of rest.” 


Thomas Hood. 



OOD-BY! ” 


“ Good-by, papa; ” and the poor girl waved 


her handkerchief, and broke into tears, though she 
had held up perfectly till now. 

“ Tirez ! ” cried Sancho, the blackest of all possible 
black men ; and he shook his fist at his crew of twenty 
willing rowers, almost as black as he. The men gave 
way heartily, and in good time; the boat shot out 
from the levee, and in a few minutes Inez could no 
longer see her father’s handkerchief, nor he hers. 
Still he stood watching the receding boat, till it was 
quite lost among the crowd of flat-boats and other 
vessels in the river. 

The parting, indeed, between father and daughter 
was such as did not often take place, even in those 


4 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

regions, in those times. Silas Perry, the father of 
this young girl, was a successful merchant, who had 
been established near forty years in the French and 
Spanish colony of Orleans, then a small colonial trad¬ 
ing-post, which gave little pledge of the great city of 
New Orleans of to-day. He had gone there — a 
young New Englander, who had his fortunes to 
make — in the year 1763, when the King of France 
first gave Louisiana to his well-beloved cousin, King 
of Spain. Silas Perry had his fortunes to make —- 
and he made them. He had been loyal to the cause 
of his own country, so soon as he heard of tea thrown 
over, of stamps burned in King Street, and of effigies 
hanging on Liberty Tree. He had wrought gallantly 
with his friend and fellow-countryman, Oliver Pollock, 
in forwarding Spanish gunpowder from the king’s 
stores to Washington’s army, by the unsuspected 
route of the Mississippi and Ohio. He had wrought 
his way into the regards of successive Spanish 
governors, and had earned the respect of the more 
important of the French planters. 

At this time the greater part of the handful of white 
people who made the ruling class in Orleans were 
French; and a brilliant “ society ” did the little col¬ 
ony maintain. But it had happened to Silas Perry, 
whose business had often called him to the Havana, 
that he had there wooed, won, and married a Spanish 
lady; and about the times of tea-parties, stamp-acts, 
English troops recalled from the Mississippi, and 
other such matters, Silas Perry had busied himself 
largely in establishing his new home in Orleans, and 
in bringing his bride there. Here the Spanish lady 


or, Show your Passports 5 

was cordially made welcome by the ladies of the little 
court, in which governor and commandant and the 
rest were of Spanish appointment, though their sub¬ 
jects were of French blood. Here she lived quietly; 
and here, after ten years, she died, leaving to her 
husband but two children. One of them had been 
sent to Paris for his education, nine years before the 
time when the reader sees his sister. For it is his 
sister, who was an infant when her mother died, whom 
we now see, sixteen years after, waving her handker¬ 
chief to her father as the barge recedes from the levee. 
Other children had died in infancy. This little Inez 
herself was but six months old when her mother died; 
and she had passed through infancy and girlhood 
without a mother’s care. 

But her father had risen to the emergency in a New 
Englander’s fashion. Not that he looked round to 
find a French lady to take the place of the Spanish 
donna. Not he. He did write home to Squam Bay, 
and stated to his sister Eunice the needs of the little 
child. He did not tell Eunice that if she came to be the 
child’s second mother she would exchange calls with 
marchionesses, would dress in silks, and ride in car¬ 
riages. He knew very well that none of these things 
would move her. He did tell her that, if she did not 
watch over the little thing in her growth, nobody else 
would but himself. He knew what he relied upon in 
saying this; and on the return of Captain Tucker in 
the schooner “ Dolores,” sure enough, the aunt of the 
little orphaned baby had appeared, with a very droll 
assortment of trunks and other baggage, in the most 
approved style of Squam Bay. She was herself 


6 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

scarcely seventeen years old when she thus changed 
her home; but she had the conscientious decision to 
which years of struggle had trained her before her 
time. She loved her brother, and she was determined 
to do her ducy by his child. To that child she had 
ever since been faithful with all a mother’s care. 

And so Miss Inez had grown up in a French town, 
under Spanish government, but with her every-day 
life directed under the simplest traditions of New 
England. With her little friends and on any visit, 
she saw from day to day the habits, so utterly differ¬ 
ent from those of home, of a French colony well 
disposed to exaggerate the customs of France. For 
language, she spoke English at home, after the fashion 
of the New Englanders; but in the society of her 
playmates and friends she spoke French, after the not 
debased fashion of the Creole French of Louisiana. 
Through all her life, however, Louisiana had been 
under the Spanish rule. Silas Perry himself spoke 
and read Spanish perfectly well, and he had taught 
Inez to use it with ease. The girl had, indeed, read 
no little of the masterpieces of Spanish literature, so 
far as, in a life not very often thwarted at home, she 
had found what pleased her among her father’s 
books. 

She was now parted from him for the first time, if 
we except short visits on one plantation or another 
on the coast. The occasion of the parting was an 
unrelenting storm of letters and messages from her 
mother’s only sister, Donna Maria Dolores, the wife 
of a Spanish officer of high rank, named Barelo. For 
some years now this husband had been stationed at 


or. Show your Passports 7 

the frontier post of San Antonio, in the province 
which was beginning to take the name of Texas; and 
in this little settlement Donna Maria, lonely enough 
herself, was making such sunshine as she could for 
those around her. Forlorn as such a position seems, 
perhaps, to people with fixed homes, it was anything 
but forlorn to Donna Maria. She had lived, she 
said, “ the life of an Arab ” till now; and now to know 
that her husband was really stationed here, though the 
station were a frontier garrison, was to know that for 
the first time since her girlhood she was to have the 
luxury of a home. 

No sooner were her household gods established, 
than she began, by the very infrequent “ opportuni¬ 
ties ” for writing which the frontier permitted, to hurl 
the storm of letters on Silas Perry’s defenceless head. 
Fortunately for him, indeed, “opportunities” were 
few. This word, in the use we now make of it, is taken 
from the older vocabulary of New England, in whose 
language it implied a method of sending a letter out¬ 
side of any mail. Just as in English novels you find 
people speaking of “ franks ” for letters, these older 
New Englanders spoke of “ opportunities.” Mail be¬ 
tween Texas and Orleans there was not, never had 
been, and, with the blessing of God, never would be. 
“ Had I the power,” said the Governor Salcedo, “ I 
would not let a bird cross from Louisiana to Texas.” 
But sometimes a stray priest going to confer with the 
bishop of Orleans, sometimes a government messen¬ 
ger from Mexico, sometimes a concealed horse-trader, 
and always camps of Indians, passed the frontier east¬ 
ward, on one pretext or another; and, with proper 


8 


Philip Nolan's Friends ; 

license given, there was no reason left why they 
should not, after Louisiana became in name a Span¬ 
ish province. No such stray traveller came to the 
city without finding Silas Perry; and inevitably he 
brought a double letter, — an affectionate note to Inez, 
begging her to write to her mother’s sister, and an 
urgent and persuasive one to her father, begging him, 
by all that was sacred, not to let the child grow up 
without knowing her mother’s only relations. 

Silas Perry’s heart was still tender. If he had lived 
to be a thousand, he would never have forgotten the 
happy days in the Havana, when he wooed and won 
his Spanish bride, nor the loyal help that her sister 
Dolores gave to the wooing and to the winning. But 
till now he had the advantage of possession; and the 
priests and soldiers and traders always carried back 
affectionate letters, explaining how much Inez loved 
her aunt, but how impossible it was for her to come. 
The concocting of these letters had become almost 
a family joke at home. 

It may help the reader’s chronology if we say that 
our story begins in the first year which bore the 
number of “ eighteen hundred ; ” he may call it the 
last year of the eighteenth century, or the first of 
the nineteenth, as he likes to be accurate or inac¬ 
curate. At this time business required that Silas 
Perry should go to Paris, and leave his home for 
many months, perhaps for a year. Silas would gladly 
have taken his sister Eunice and his daughter with 
him; but travel was not what it is now, nor was 
Paris what it is now. And although he did not 
think his daughter’s head would be cut off, still he 


or. Show your Passports 9 

doubted so far what he might find in Paris, that he 
shrank from taking her thither. As it happened, 
at this moment there came a particularly well-aimed 
shaft from Aunt Dolores’s armory; and fortune added 
an “ opportunity,” not only for reply, but for per¬ 
mitting Inez and her aunt to make the journey into 
Texas under competent escort if they chose to sub¬ 
mit themselves to all the hardships of travel across 
prairies and through a wilderness. True, the enter¬ 
prise was utterly unheard of: this did not make it 
less agreeable in Silas Perry’s eyes. It was not such 
an enterprise as Donna Maria Dolores had proposed. 
She had arranged that the girl should be sent with 
proper companionship, on one of Silas’s vessels, to 
Corpus Christi on the Gulf. She had promised to 
go down herself to meet her, with an escort of lancers 
whom their friend Governor Herrera had promised 
her. But Silas Perry had not liked this plan. He 
said boldly, that, if the girl were to ride a hundred 
miles, she might ride three hundred. Mr. Nolan would 
take better care of her than any Governor Herrera 
of them all. “ Women always supposed you were 
sending schooners into mud-holes, where there was 
nothing to buy, and nothing to sell.” And so the 
most improbable of all possible events took place. 
By way of preparation for going to Paris, Silas Perry 
sent his precious daughter, and his sister only less 
precious, on a long land-journey of adventure, to 
make a visit as long, at least, as his own was. It 
need not be said, if the reader apprehends what man¬ 
ner of man he was, that he had provided for her 
comfort, so far as forethought, lavish expenditure, 



io Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

and a wide acquaintance with the country could 
provide for it. If he had not come to this sudden 
and improbable determination, this story would not 
have to be written. 

Inez, as has been said, fairly broke down as the 
rowers gave way. Her Aunt Eunice kept up the 
pretence of flying her handkerchief till they had 
wholly lost sight of the point of their embarkation. 
And then the first words of comfort which came to 
the sobbing girl were not from her aunt. 

“Take one o’ them Boston crackers; they say 
they’s dreadful good when you go on the water. 
Can’t git none all along the coast; they don’t know 
how to keep ’em. So soon as ye father said you 
was to go, I told old Tucker to bring me some from 
home; told him where to git ’em. Got ’em at Rich¬ 
ardson’s in School Street. Don’t have ’em good 
nowhere else.” 

Inez, poor child, could as easily have eaten a 
horseshoe as the biscuit which was thus tendered 
her. But she took it with a pleasant smile; and the 
words answered a better purpose than Dr. Flavel’s 
homilies on contentment could have served. 

The speaker was a short-set, rugged New Eng¬ 
lander, of about sixty years of age, whose dress and 
appointments were in every respect curiously, not 
to say sedulously, different from those of the Creole 
French, or the Spanish seamen, or the Western flat- 
boatmen, all around him. Regardless of treaties, of 
nationalities, or of birthright privileges, Seth Ransom 
regarded all these people as “ furriners,” and so 
designated them, even in the animated and indignant 


II 


or. Show your Passports 

conversations which he held with them. He was 
himself a Yankee of the purest blood, who had, how¬ 
ever, no one of the restless or adventurous traits 
attributed to the Yankee of fiction or of the stage. 
He had, it is true, followed the sea in early life. 
But, having fallen in with Silas Perry in Havana, 
he had attached himself to his service with a certain 
feudal loyalty. The institution of feudalism, as phil¬ 
osophical students have observed, made the vassal 
quite as much the master of his lord as the master 
was of his vassal, if not more. That this was the 
reason why Seth Ransom served Silas Perry, it would 
be wrong to say. But it is true that he served him 
in a masterful way, as a master serves.. It is also 
true that he idolized Inez, as he had idolized her 
mother before her. Of each, he was the most faith¬ 
ful henchman and the most loyal admirer. Yet he 
would address Inez personally with the intimate 
terms in which he spoke to her when she was a baby 
in his arms, when perhaps she had been left for 
an hour in his happy and perfect charge. If no one 
else were present, he would call her “ Een,” or 
“ Inez,” as if she had been his own granddaughter. 
In the presence of others, on the other hand, no don 
of the Governor’s staff could have found fault with 
the precision of his etiquette. 

The necessities of Mr. Perry’s business often sent 
Seth Ransom back to New England, so that he 
could drink again from the waters of the pump in 
King Street, as he still called the State Street of 
to-day. It was as Hercules sometimes'let Antaeus put 
his foot to the ground. Ransom returned from each 


12 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

such visit with new contempt for everything which 
he found upon other shores, excepting for the house¬ 
hold of Silas Perry, and perhaps a modified toleration 
for that of Oliver Pollock. For Silas Perry himself, 
for Miss Eunice, and Miss Inez, his chivalrous de¬ 
votion blazed out afresh on each return. 

He was athletic, strong, and practical. Nobody 
had ever found anything he could not do, excepting 
that he read and wrote with such difficulty that in 
practice he never descended to these arts except in the 
most trying emergency. When, therefore, Silas Perry 
determined on his rash project of sending his daughter 
and sister under Mr. Nolan’s escort to San Antonio, 
he determined, of course, to send Seth Ransom with 
them as their body-guard. The fact that he sent him, 
in truth, really relieved the enterprise from its rash¬ 
ness; for, though Seth Ransom had never crossed 
the prairies, any one who knew him, and the relation 
in which he stood to Miss Inez, knew that, if it were 
necessary, he would carry her from Natchez to the 
Alamo in his arms. 

The boat was soon free from the little flotilla which 
then made all the commerce of the little port; and 
the steady stroke of the well-trained crew hurried her 
up stream with a speed that exacted the admiration 
of the lazy lookers-on of whatever nation. 

Inez thanked her old cavalier for his attention, 
made him happy by asking him to find something 
for her in a bag which he had stowed away, and then 
kept him by her side. 

“ Do they row as well as this in Boston Harbor, 
Ransom?” she said. For some reason unknown, 



or, Show your Passports i 3 

Ransom was never addressed by his baptismal 
name. 

“ Don’t have to. Ain’t many niggers there, no 
way. What they is lives on Nigger Hill; that’s all 
on one side. Yes: some niggers goes to sea, but 
them’s all cooks. Don’t have to row much there. 
Have sail-boats; don’t have no rivers.” 

The girl loved to hear his dialect, and was not 
averse to stir up his resentment against all men 
who had not been born under her father’s roof, and 
all nations but those which ate codfish salted on 
Saturday. 

“ I don’t see where they get their ducks, if they 
have no rivers,” she said artfully, as if she were 
thinking aloud. 

“Ducks! thousands on ’em. Big ducks too; not 
little critters like these. Go into Faneuil Hall Market 
any day, and have more ducks than you can ask for. 
Ducks is nothin’.” And a grim smile stole over his 
face, as if he were pleased that Inez had selected 
ducks as the precise point on which her comparison 
should be made. 

“ Well, surely, Ransom, they have no sugar-cane,” 
said she; and, by her eye, he saw that she was watch¬ 
ing Sancho, the boatswain as he might be called, 
who, as he nodded to his men, solaced himself by 
chewing and sucking at a bit of fresh cane from a 
little heap at his side. 

“Sugar-cane! Guess not. Don’t want’em. Won’t 
touch ’em. Oceans of white sugar, all done up in 
sugar-loaves, jest when they want it. Them as makes 
sugar makes it in the woods, makes it out of trees; 


14 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

don’t have to have them dirty niggers make it. 
Oceans of sugar-loaves all the time! ” And again 
that severe smile stole over his face, and he looked 
up into the sky, almost as if he saw celestial beings 
carrying purple-papered sugar-loaves to Boston, and 
as if—next to ducks — the supply of sugar to that 
town was its marked characteristic. 

Eunice Perry was glad to follow the lead which 
Ransom had given, sagaciously or unconsciously. 
Anything was better for the voyage than a homesick 
brooding on what they had left behind. 

“ We must not make Inez discontented with 
Orleans and the coast, Ransom. Poor child! she 
has nothing but roses and orange-blossoms, figs and 
bananas; we must not tell her too much about russet 
apples, or she will be discontented.” 

“ I do like russet apples, aunty darling, quite as 
well as I like figs; but I shall not be discontented 
while I have you on one side of me, and Ransom on 
the other, and dear old Sancho beating time in front.” 
This, with a proud expression, as if she knew they 
were trying to lead her out from herself, and that she 
did not need to be cosseted. Old Sancho caught the 
glance, and started his rowers to new energy. To 
maintain a crack crew of oarsmen was one of the 
boasts of the “coast” at that time; and, although 
Silas Perry was in no sort a large planter, yet he 
maintained the communication between his plantation 
above the city and his home in the city,—which, for 
himself, he preferred at any season to any place of 
refuge, — by a crew as stalwart and as well trained as 
any planter of them all. 


or, Show your Passports 15 

The boat on which the two ladies and their com¬ 
panions were embarked was not the elegant barge in 
which they usually made the little voyage from the 
plantation to their city home. It was a more business¬ 
like craft which Silas Perry had provided to carry his 
daughter as far as Natchitoches on the Red River, 
where she and her companions were to join the land 
expedition of Philip Nolan and his friends. The 
after-part of the boat was protected from sun or rain 
by an awning or light roof, generally made of sails, or 
sometimes of skins, but, in Inez’s boat, of light wood¬ 
work ; it had among the habitants the name of tende- 
let. Under the tendelet a little deck, with the privi¬ 
leges of all quarter-decks, belonged to the master of 
the boat and his company. Here he ate his meals by 
day; here, if he slept on board, he spread his mat¬ 
tress at night. It was high enough to give a good 
view of the river and the low shores, of any approach¬ 
ing boat, or any other object of interest in the some¬ 
what limited catalogue of river experiences. In the 
preparations for the voyage of the ladies, curtains 
had been arranged, which would screen them from 
either side, from the sun, from wind, or even from a 
shower. 

A long tarpaulin, called the pittat, was stretched 
over the whole length of the boat, to protect the 
stores, the trunks, and other cargo, from the weather. 
The rowers sat at the sides, old Sancho watching 
them from the rear; while a man in the bow, called 
the bosman} who generally wielded a sort of boat- 


1 Was this word once “boatswain,” perhaps? 


16 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

hook, watched the course, and -fended off any floating 
log, or watched for snag or sawyer. 

The voyage this afternoon was not long. It was, as 
Inez said, only a “ taste-piece.” Eunice said it was 
as the caravans at the East go a mile out of town on 
the first night, so that they may the more easily send 
back for anything that is forgotten. 

“ All nonsense ! ” said Ransom. “ I told ye father 
might as well start afore sunrise, and be at the Cross 
to-night: would n’t hear a word on it, and so lost all 
day.” 

In truth, Inez was to spend her last night at the 
plantation, which had been her favorite summer home 
for years, to bid farewell to the servants there, and to 
gather up such of her special possessions as could be 
carried on the packhorses, on this pilgrimage to her 
Spanish aunt. Her father would gladly have come 
with her, but for the possibility that his ship might 
sail for Bordeaux early the next morning. 


CHAPTER II 

A MEETING 

“ Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.” 

Alexander Pope. 

Before sunrise the next morning the final embarka¬ 
tion was to take place. The whole house was in an 
uproar. The steady determination of old Chloe, 
chief of the kitchen, that Miss Inez should eat the 
very best breakfast she ever saw, before she went ofl 


or. Show your Passports 17 

“ to the wild Indians,” dominated the whole establish¬ 
ment. In this determination Chloe was steadily up¬ 
held by Ransom, who knew, by many conflicts from 
which he had retreated worsted, that it was idle to try 
to dictate to her, while at the same time he had views 
as decided as ever on the inferiority of French cookery 
to that of New England. The preparation of this 
master breakfast had called upon Chloe and her 
allies long before light. Caesar and his allies, also 
preparing for a voyage which would take them from 
home for many days, were as early and as noisy. 
The only wonder, indeed, was that the girl, who was 
the centre of the idolatry of them all, or her aunt, who 
was hardly less a favorite, could either of them sleep 
a wink, in the neighborhood of such clamors, after 
midnight passed. When they did meet at breakfast, 
they found the table lighted with bougies, and prepa¬ 
rations for such a repast as if the governor and his 
staff, the commandant with his, and half the mer¬ 
chants of Orleans, had been invited. Besides Fran¬ 
cois and Laurent, who were in regular attendance on 
the table, Ransom was hovering round, somewhat as 
a chief butler might have done in another form of 
luxurious civilization. 

“ Eat a bit of breast, Miss Inez? and here’s the 
second j’int; try that. Don’t know nothin’, — nig¬ 
gers, — but I see to this myself. Miss Eunice, them 
eggs is fresh: took ’em myself from four different 
nests. Niggers don’t know nothin’ about eggs. 
Made a fire in the barn chamber, and biled ’em right 
myself, jest as your father likes ’em, Miss Inez. Them 
others is as hard as rocks.” 


i 8 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Inez was in the frolic of a new expedition now; and 
the traces of parting, if indeed they existed, could not 
be discerned. She balanced Ransom’s attentions 
against the equal attention of the two boys, pretended 
to eat from more dishes and to drink from more 
cups than would have served Cleopatra for a month, 
amused herself in urging Aunt Eunice to do the same, 
and pretended to wrap in napkins, for the “ smoking 
halt,” the viands upon which her aunt would not try 
experiments. The meal, on the whole, was not un¬ 
satisfactory to Aunt Chloe’s pride, to Ransom’s pre¬ 
vision, or to the public opinion of the household. All 
who were left behind were, in private, unanimous on 
one point, — namely, that Miss Eunice and Miss Inez 
were both to be roasted alive within a week by the 
Caddo Indians; to be torn limb from limb, and eaten, 
even as they were now eating the spring chickens before 
them. But as this view was somewhat discouraging, 
and as Aunt Chloe, after having once solemnly im¬ 
pressed it upon Eunice, had been told by Silas Perry 
that she should be locked up for a day in the lock- 
house if she ever said another such word to anybody, 
it was less publicly expressed in the farewells of the 
morning, though not held any the less implicitly. 

In truth, the bougies were a wholly unnecessary 
elegance or precaution; for the noisy party did not, 
in fact, get under way till the sun had well risen, and 
every sign of early exhalation had passed from the 
river. Such had been Mr. Perry’s private orders to 
his sister; and, although the general custom of a 
start at sunrise was too well fixed to be broken in 
upon in form, Eunice and Ransom had no lack of 


or, Show your Passports 19 

methods of delaying the final embarkation, even at the 
risk of a little longer pull before the “ smoke.” 

The glory of the morning, as seen from the ele¬ 
vated quarter-deck, was a new delight to Inez. She 
watched at first for a handkerchief or some other 
token of farewell from one or another veranda as they 
passed plantations which were within the range of a 
ride or sail from her own home. Afterward, even as 
the settlement became rather more sparse, there was 
still the matchless beauty of heavy clumps of green, 
and of the long shadows of early morning. Even in 
the autumn colors, nothing can tame the richness of 
the foliage; and the contrast rendered by patches of 
ripening sugar-cane or other harvests is only the 
more striking from the loyal and determined verdure 
of trees which will not change, but always speak, not 
of spring, but of perennial summer. 

The crew felt all the importance of the expedition. 
Often as they had gone down the river with one or 
another cargo to Orleans, few of them had ever voy¬ 
aged for any considerable distance up the stream. 
This was terra incognita into which they were 
coming. Not but they had heard many a story, 
extravagant enough too, of the marvels of the river, 
from one or another flat-boatman who had availed 
himself of the hospitalities of the plantation for his 
last night before arriving at the city. But these 
stories were not very consistent with each other; and, 
while the negroes half believed them, they half dis¬ 
believed at the same time. To go bodily into the 
presence of these unknown marvels was an experi¬ 
ence wholly unexpected by each of them. Even 


20 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Caesar the old cook, Sancho, and Paul the bosman, 
were shaken from their balance or propriety by an 
adventure so strange; and the preparations they had 
made for the voyage, and the orders they had given 
to the men who were to leave home for a period so 
unusual, all showed that they regarded this event as 
by far the most important of their lives. 

All the same the bosman gave out a familiar and 
sonorous song, and all the same the rowers joined 
heartily in the words. And when he cunningly in¬ 
serted some new words, with an allusion to the 
adventures before them, and to the treasures of silver 
which all parties would bring back from the Caddo 
mines, a guffaw of satisfaction showed that all parties 
were well pleased. And the readiness with which they 
caught up such of the words as came into the refrain 
showed that they were in no sort dispirited, either by 
the fatigue or the danger of the undertaking before 
them. 

The song was in the crudest French dialect used 
by the plantation slaves. The air was that of a little 
German marching song, which the quick-eared 
negroes had caught from German neighbors on the 
coast; old veterans of Frederick’s, very likely. In 
the more polished rendering into which Inez and her 
aunt reduced it, before their long voyage was over, 
still crude enough to give some idea of the simplicity 
of the original, it reappeared in these words:— 

“ Darkeys, make this dug-out hurry; Tirez. 

Boys behind, begin to row; Tirez. 

And don’t let misses have to worry: 

Missis have to worry when the light of day is gone ; Tirez. 


21 


or. Show your Passports 

“ Lazy dogs there behind, are your paddles all broke ? 

Lazy dogs there before, have you all lost the stroke ? 

F arewell! F arewell! F arewell — farewell, 

Farewell! Dear girl! Farewell — farewell. 

“Up the Mississippi River; Tirez. 

Caddoes have a silver-mine; Tirez . 

My sweetheart takes to all I give her, 

All that I can give her when my misses is come home; Tirez. 

“ Lazy dogs there behind, are your paddles all broke ? 

Lazy dogs there before, have you all lost the stroke? 

Farewell! Farewell! Farewell — farewell, 

Farewell! Dear girl! Farewell — farewell .” 1 

It will not do, however, to describe the detail from 
day to day, even of adventures so new to Inez and all 
her companions as were these. For a day or two the 
arrangements which Mr. Perry had made were such, 
that they made harbor for each night with some out¬ 
lying frontiersman’s family. The only adventure which 
startled them took place one morning after they were 
a little wonted to their voyage in the wilderness. 

By the laws of all river craft, the hands were entitled 
every day, at the end of two hours, to a rest, if only 
to take breath. Everybody lighted a pipe, and the 
rest was called the “smoking-halt.” The boat was 
run up to the shore; and the ladies would walk along 
a little way, ordering the boatmen to take them up 
when they should overtake them. 

Inez had, one morning, already collected a brilliant 
bouquet, when, at a turning of the river, she came out 
on an unexpected encampment. A cloud of smoke 
rose from a smouldering fire, a dozen Indian children 

1 Readers who find themselves on some placid lake, river, or bayou 


22 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

were chasing each other to and fro in the shrubbery, 
the .mothers of some of them were at work by the 
fire, and the men of the party were lounging upon 
the grass. Four or five good-sized canoes drawn up 
upon the shore showed where the whole party had 
come from: each canoe bore at the head a stag’s 
head fixed on a pronged stick, as a sort of banner, 
whether of triumph or of festivity. 


in an autumn day, should autumn ever come again, may like to intwine 
the words of the song in the meshes of the German air. Here it is : — 


1 —{h 9 i 

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mmm- 

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Pf=pf\ 

fnv i L 

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rttc 

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Chorus. 


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p & 0 


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or, Show your Passports 23 

Inez and Eunice had so often welcomed such par¬ 
ties at the plantation, that neither of them showed 
any alarm or anxiety when they came so suddenly 
out upon the little encampment. But Inez did have 
a chance to say, “ Dear old Chloe! she is a true 
prophet so soon. There are the fires, and here are 
we. Dear aunty, pray take the first turn.” Both of 
them, very likely, would have been glad enough to 
avoid the rencontre ; but as they were in for it, and 
had no near base to retreat upon, they advanced as 
if cordially, and greeted the nearest woman with a 
smile and a few words of courtesy. 

In a minute the half-naked children had gathered 
in three little groups, the smaller hiding behind the 
larger, and all staring at the ladies with a curiosity so 
fresh and undisguised that it seemed certain they 
had never seen such people, or at the least such cos¬ 
tumes, before. It was clear enough in a minute more 
that the Indian women did not understand a syllable of 
the words which their fairer sisters addressed to them. 
One or two of the men rose from the ground, and 
joined in the interview, but with little satisfaction as 
far as any interchange of ideas went. Both parties, 
however, showed a friendly spirit. The Indian women 
went so far as to offer broiled fish and fresh grapes 
to the ladies. These declined the hospitality; but 
Inez, taking from her neck a little scarlet scarf, beck¬ 
oned to her the prettiest child in the group nearest 
to her, and tied it round the girl’s neck. The little 
savage was pleased beyond words with the adornment, 
slipped from her grasp, and ran with absurd vanity from 
one group to another to show off her new acquisition 


24 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ What would my dear Madame Faustine say, if 
she knew that her dearly beloved scarf was so soon 
adorning the neck of a dirty savage? ” 

“ She would say, if she were not a goose,” said 
Eunice, “ that you will have the whole tribe on you 
for scarfs now; and, as you have not thirty, that you 
have parted with your pretty scarf for nothing.” 

Sure enough, every little brat of the half-naked 
company came around them, to try the natural lan¬ 
guages of beggary. Inez laughed heartily enough, but 
shook her head, and tried if they would not under¬ 
stand “ No, no, no ! ” if she only said it fast enough. 

“ We can do better than that,” said Eunice. “We 
may as well make a treaty with them, as you have 
begun. We will wait here for the boat. I am horri¬ 
bly afraid of them; but, if we pretend not to be fright¬ 
ened, that will be next best to meeting nobody at all.” 

So she patted two dirty little brats upon the cheeks, 
took another by the hand, and led him to the shade 
of a China-tree which grew near the levee, and there 
sat down. 

The children thought, perhaps, that they were to 
be roasted and eaten; for the tales of the Attakapas, 
or man-eaters of the coast, travelled west as well as 
east. But they showed all the aplomb of their race 
and, if they were to be eaten, meant to be eaten with¬ 
out groaning. In a moment more, however, they 
had forgotten their fears. 

Eunice had torn from the book she held in her 
hand the blank leaf at the end. She folded a strip 
of the paper six or eight times, and then with her 
pocket-scissors cut out the figure of a leaping Indian. 


or, Show your Passports 25 

The feathers in his head-dress were, as she said to 
Inez, quite expressive; and his posture was savage 
enough for the reddest. The children watched her 
with amazement, the group enlarging itself from 
moment to moment. So soon as the leaping savage 
was completed, Eunice unfolded the paper, and of 
course produced eight leaping savages, who held 
each other by the hands. These she brought round 
into a ring, and by a stitch fastened the outer hands 
together. She placed the ring of dancers, thus easily 
made, upon her book, and then made them slide up 
and down upon the cover. 

The reticence of these babes of the woods was 
completely broken. They shouted and sang in their 
delight; and even their phlegmatic fathers and 
mothers were obliged to draw near. 

Eunice followed up her advantage. This time her 
ready scissors cut out a deer, with his nose down; 
and, as the paper was unfolded, two deer were smell¬ 
ing at the same root in the ground. Rings of horses, 
groups of buffaloes, rabbits, antelopes, and other 
marvels followed; and the whole company was spell¬ 
bound, and, indeed, would have remained so as long 
as Eunice continued her magic creations, when Inez 
whispered to her,— 

“ I see the boat coming.” 

Eunice made no sign of the satisfaction she felt, 
but bade Inez walk quietly to the bend of the stream, 
and wave her handkerchief; and the girl did so. 

Eunice quietly finished the group which engaged 
her, and then, singling out the youngest of the girls, 
with a pointed gesture gave one of the much-coveted 


26 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

marvels to each of them, flung away the scraps of cut 
paper from her lap, and sprang quickly to her feet. 

The flying bits of paper were quite enough to 
arrest the attention of the warriors, and they scat¬ 
tered in eager pursuit of them. 

A minute more and the boat was at the rudiment 
of a levee which had already begun to form itself. 
The girls sprang on board again, not sorry to regain 
the protection of their party; and Eunice inwardly 
resolved to run no more such risks while she was 
commander of the expedition. 

“ Would n’t have dared to do nothin’,” said old 
Ransom, concealing by a square lie his own anxiety 
at the rencontre . “They’s all cowards and liars, them 
redskins be ; but if you go walkin’ ag’in, Miss Eunice, 
better call me to go with you: they’s all afraid of a 
white man.” 

“ Ah, well, Ransom, they were very civil to us 
to-day; and I believe I have made forty friends at 
the cost of a little white paper.” 

None the less was Eunice mortified and annoyed 
that she should have had a fright — for a fright it was 
— so early in their enterprise. It had been arranged 
with care, that at night they should tarry at planta¬ 
tions, while plantations lasted ; but from Point Coupee 
to Natchitoches, where they were to join Captain 
Nolan’s party, was fifty-five leagues, which, at the 
best the “ patron ” could do, would cost them six or 
seven days; and she did not hope for even a log- 
cabin on the way for all that distance. And now, 
even before that weakest spot in their line, she had 
walked into a camp of these red rascals, who would 


or, Show your Passports 27 

have made no scruple of stripping from them all that 
they carried or wore. 

“ All’s well that ends well, aunty,” said Inez, as 
she saw her aunt’s anxiety. 

But none the less did Eunice feel that anxiety. 
Ransom, she saw, felt it; and the good fellow was, 
not more careful, but ten times more eager to show 
that he was careful, at every encampment. The 
patron, who was wholly competent to the charge 
given him, with the utmost respect and deference 
vied with Ransom in his arrangements. From this 
moment forward the ladies were watched with a sur¬ 
veillance which would have made Eunice angry had 
she not seen that it was meant so kindly. 

This caution and assiduity were not without their 
effect upon her. But all the same, her relief was 
infinite, when on the night when they hauled up, 
rather later than usual, below the rapids of the 
Red River, she was surprised by hearing her own 
name in a friendly voice, and Captain Nolan sprang 
on board. 

He had met them two or three days earlier than he 
expected. 


CHAPTER III 

PHILIP NOLAN 

“ Bid them stand in the king’s name.” 

To Philip Nolan and his companions is due that 
impression of American courage and resource which 
for nearly half a century impressed the Spanish oc- 


28 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

cupants of Texas, until, in the year 1848, they finally 
surrendered this beautiful region, however unwill¬ 
ingly, to the American arms and arts. 

For ten years before the period of this story, 
scarcely any person had filled a place more dis¬ 
tinguished among the American voyagers on the 
Mississippi, or the American settlers on its eastern 
banks, than had PHILIP Nolan. 

His reputation was founded first on his athletic 
ability, highly esteemed among an athletic race. He 
had had intimate relations with the Spanish gover¬ 
nors of Louisiana; but no one doubted his loyalty to 
his native land. He understood the Indians thor¬ 
oughly, as the reader will have occasion to see. He 
had a passion for the wilderness, and for the life of 
the forest and prairie; but he was well educated, 
whether for commerce or for command; and Spanish 
governors, Orleans merchants, and American gen¬ 
erals and secretaries of state, alike were glad to 
advise with him, and profited by his rare information 
of the various affairs intrusted to their care, — in¬ 
formation which he had gained by personal inspection 
and inquiry. 

Once and again had Philip Nolan, fortified by 
official safeguards, crossed into Texas, hunted wild 
horses there, and brought them back into the neigh¬ 
borhood of New Orleans, or the American settlements 
of the Mississippi, to a good market. A perfect 
judge of horses, an enthusiastic lover of them, he 
was more pleased with such adventure than with 
what he thought the humdrum lines of trade. His 
early training, indeed, had been so far that of a 


or. Show your Passports 29 

soldier, that he was always hoping for a campaign. 
With every new breath of a quarrel between the 
United States and Spain, he hoped that his knowl¬ 
edge of the weak spots in the Spanish rule might 
prove of service to his own country. Indeed, if the 
whole truth could be told, it would probably appear 
that, for the last year or two before the reader meets 
him, Nolan had been lying on his oars, or looking 
around him, waiting for the hoped-for war which, as 
he believed, would sweep the forces of the King of 
Spain out from this magnificent country, which they 
held to such little purpose. Disappointed in such 
hopes, he had now undertaken, for the third time, 
an expedition to collect horses in Texas for sale on 
the Mississippi. 1 

Silas Perry knew Nolan so well, and placed in him 
confidence so unlimited, that he had with little hesi¬ 
tation accepted the offer of his escort made first in 
jest, but renewed in utter earnest, as soon as the 
handsome young adventurer found that his old friend 
looked upon it seriously Nolan had represented 
that he had a party large enough to secure the ladies 
from Indians or from stragglers. The ways were 
perfectly familiar to him, and to more than one of 

1 The writer of this tale, by an oversight which he regrets, and has 
long regretted, spoke of this venturous and brave young Kentuckian 
as Stephen Nolan in a story published in 1863. The author had 
created an imaginary and mythical brother of Nolan’s, to whom he 
gave the name of Philip Nolan, and to whom he gave a place in the 
army of the United States. Ever since he discovered his mistake, he 
has determined to try to give to the true Philip Nolan such honors 
as he could pay to a name to which this young man gave true honor. 
With this wish he attempts the little narrative of his life, which 
forms a part of this story. 


30 Philip Noland Friends ; 

those with him. Their business itself would take 
them very near to San Antonio, if not quite there; 
and, without the slightest difficulty, he could and 
would see that the ladies were safely confided to 
Major Barelo’s care. 

So soon as this proposal had been definitely stated, 
it met with the entire approval of Miss Inez. This 
needs scarcely be said. To a young lady of her age, 
three hundred miles of riding on horseback seems 
three hundred times as charming as one mile; and 
even one, with a good horse and a good cavalier, is 
simply perfection. All the votes Miss Inez could give 
from the beginning were given in plumpers for the plan. 

Nor had it met the objection which might have 
been expected from the more sedate and venerable 
Miss Eunice. It is true, this lady was more than 
twice Inez’s age; but even at thirty-five one is not a 
pillar of salt, nor wholly indisposed to adventure. 
Eunice’s watchful eye also had observed many rea¬ 
sons, some physical and some more subtle, why it 
would be for the advantage of Inez to be long absent 
from Orleans. Perhaps she would have shed no 
tears had she been told that the girl should never 
see that town again. So long as she was a child, it 
had not been difficult to arrange that the society she 
kept should be only among children whose language, 
thought, and habit would not hurt her. But Inez 
was a woman now, — a very lovely, simple, pure, and 
conscientious woman, it was true; but, for all that, 
Eunice was not more inclined to see the girl exposed 
to the follies and extravagances of the exaggerated 
French or Spanish life of the little colony, especially 


or. Show your Passports 31 

while her father was in Europe. And Eunice was 
afraid, at the same time, that the life, only too lux¬ 
urious, which they led in the city and on the plan¬ 
tation, did not strengthen the girl, as she would fain 
have her strengthened, against the constitutional 
weakness which had brought her mother to an early 
grave. Eunice saw no reason why, at sixteen years 
of age, Inez should not lead a life as simple, as much 
exposed to the open climate, and as dependent on 
her own resources, as she herself, with the advantages 
and disadvantages of Squam Bay, had led when she 
was a girl just beginning to be a woman. 

Eunice Perry and Philip Nolan were almost of the 
same age; and those who knew them both, and who 
saw how intimate the handsome young Kentuckian 
was in the comfortable New England household of 
Silas Perry, whether in the town house or plantation 
house, were forever gossiping and wondering, were 
saying now that he was in love with Eunice, now that 
she was in love with him; now that they were to be 
married at Easter, and now that the match was 
broken off at Michaelmas. 

From the time when he first appeared in Orleans, 
almost a boy, with the verdure of his native village 
still clinging to him, but none the less cheerful, manly, 
courageous, enterprising, and handsome, he had 
found a friend in Silas Perry; and the office of the 
New England merchant was one of the first places to 
which he would have gone for counsel. It was not 
long before the shrewd and hearty New Englander, 
who knew men, and knew what men to trust, began 
to take the youngster home with him. Those were 


32 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

in the days when Inez was in her cradle, and when 
Eunice was a stranger in Louisiana. 

Silas Perry had been Philip Nolan’s counsellor, em¬ 
ployer, and friend. Philip Nolan had been Silas 
Perry’s pupil, agent, messenger, and friend. Eunice 
Perry had been Philip Nolan’s frequent companion, 
his more frequent confidante, and most frequently his 
friend; and, as such friendship had been tested, there 
were a thousand good offices which she had asked of 
him, and never asked in vain. An intimacy so sincere 
as this, the growth of years of confidence, made it 
natural to all parties that Eunice and Inez should 
undertake their journey under the escort of this sol¬ 
dier who was not quite a merchant, and this merchant 
who was not quite a soldier,— Philip Nolan. 

“ But you are all alone, Captain Phil,” said Inez, ex¬ 
pressing in the very frankest way the pleasure which 
the meeting, hardly expected, with her old friend 
afforded her. “Where is our army?” 

“ Our army has gone in advance, to free the 
prairies of any marauding throngs who might press 
too close on the princess who deigns to visit them.” 

“ Which means, being interpreted, I suppose, that 
the army is buying corn at Natchitoches,” said Eunice. 

“Yes. and no,” said he, a little gravely, as she 
fancied. “ We shall find them near Natchitoches if 
we do not find them this side. I must talk with my 
friend the patron, and see if I can persuade him to 
give up your luxurious boat for one that I have 
chartered above the rapids. I have not much faith 
that the ‘ Donna Maria,’ or the ‘ Dolores,’ or the ‘ Sea 
Gull,’—which name has she to-day, Miss Inez? — 


or, Show your Passports 33 

that this sumptuous frigate of ours can be got through 
the rapids so easily as we thought at your father’s. 
But I have what is really a very tidy boat above; and, 
before you ladies are awake in the morning, we will 
see if you are to change your quarters.” 

“ And must I leave thee, my Martha? ” cried Inez 
in a voice of mock tragedy. “ Captain Nolan, she is 
the ‘ Martha,’ named after the wife of the Father of his 
Country In leaving the proud banner of Spain, under 
which I was born, to pass, though only for a few 
happy hours, under the stars and stripes, accompanied 
by this noble friend whom I see I need not present to 
you, — Miss Perry, General Nolan; a lady of the very 
highest rank of the New England nobility, — accom¬ 
panied, I say, by an American lady of such distinc¬ 
tion, I ordered the steersman of my bark to keep 
always in the eastern side of the river, in that short 
but blessed interval before we entered this redder but 
more Spanish stream.” 

The young American of 1876 must remember that 
in 1800 both the east and west sides of the Mississippi 
were Spanish territory, up to the southern line of our 
present State of that name. Above that point, the 
eastern half of the river was “ American,” the western 
half was Spanish. For a few miles before the boat 
had come into the Red River, she had in fact been 
floating, as Inez thought, in American waters; and 
the girl had made more than one chance to land on 
American soil, though it was the mud of a canebrake, 
for the first time of her life. All parties had joined 
in her enthusiasm; and they had fixed a bivouac on 
this little stretch of her father’s land. So soon as 
3 



34 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

they entered the Red River, they were under Spanish 
jurisdiction once more. 

Nolan entered into the spirit of the girl’s banter; 
and they knew very well that it was not all fun. 

“ What a pity that your ladyship could not have 
come to Fort Adams, or to Natchez, 1 to begin with 
us ! ” he said. 

Natchez, then a village of six hundred inhabitants, 
was the southernmost town in the United States. It 
was Nolan’s own headquarters, and from there his 
expedition had started. 

“ Your grace should have seen the stars and stripes 
flying from the highest flagstaff in the West. I should 
have been honored by the presence of your high¬ 
nesses at my humble quarters. Indeed, my friend the 
major-general commanding at Fort Adams would 
have saluted your royal highnesses’ arrival by a salvo 
of sixteen guns; and, the moment your majesty 
entered the works of that fortress, every heart would 
have been yours, as every recruit presented arms. A 
great pity, Miss Inez, you had not come up to 
Natchez. But what does my friend Ransom think of 
all this voyaging? ” 

Inez called him. 

u Ransom! Captain Nolan wants to know how you 
liked coming back into your own country.” 

“ Evenin’, captain.” 

This was Ransom’s only reply to the cordial salu- 

1 The reader must note that Natchez on the Mississippi, Natchi¬ 
toches on the Red River, and Nacogdoches on the Angelina River, are 
three different towns. The names seem to have been derived from 
the same roots. 


or. Show your Passports 35 

tation of the young Kentuckian, who was, however, 
one of Ransom’s very few favorites. 

“ Miss Inez says you spent Monday night in the 
United States.” 

“ Patron says so too,” replied the sententious Ran¬ 
som. “ Don’t know nothin’. Much as ever can 
make them niggers pull the boat along. Wanted to 
walk myself: could walk faster than all on ’em can 
row, put together. Told the patron so. We slept in 
a canebrake; wust canebrake we see since we left 
home. Patron said it was Ameriky. 1 Patron don’t 
know nothin’. Ain’t no canebrakes in Ameriky.” 

“ There’s something amazingly like them for the 
first thousand or two miles of Miss Inez’s journey 
there,” said Nolan, laughing. “ Anyway, I’m glad the 
alligators did not eat her up, and you too, Ransom.” 

“ They’d like to. Did n’t give ’em no chance,” re¬ 
plied the old man, with a beaming expression on his 
countenance. “ Loaded the old double-barrel with 
two charges of buckshot, sot up myself outside her 
tent. Darned critters knew it ’zwell as I did ; did n’t 
dare come nigh her all night long. They’d like to.” 

“ You should have given them pepper, Ransom. 
Throw a little red pepper on the water, and it makes 
the bull alligators sneeze. That frightens all the 
others, and they go twenty miles off before morning.” 

Inez was laughing herself to death by this time, 
but checked herself in time to ask whether she might 
not fly the stars and stripes on the “ Lady Martha.” 

“ What’s the use of calling her the ‘ Lady Martha ’ 

1 The use of the words, “ America ” for the United States, and 
“ Americans ” for their people, was universal among the Spaniards 
even at this early day. 


36 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

only for these four or five miles? And my dear silk 
flag: is it not a beauty, Captain Nolan? I made it 
with my own fair hands. And if you knew how to sew, 
Captain Nolan, you would know how hard it is to sew 
stars into blue silk, — silk stars too. I never should 
have done it but for Sister Felicie: she helped me 
out of hours; and I wish I did not think she was 
doing penance now. But is it not a beauty? Look 
at it! ” and she flung her pretty flag open over her 
knees and Eunice’s. “ All your stripes, you see, with 
the white on the outside, as you taught me. And I 
did not faint nor shirk for one star, though mortal 
strength did tire, and Sister Felicie did have to help; 
but there are all the sixteen there. That one with 
the little blood-spot on it is Vermont: I pricked my 
finger horridly for Vermont; and that is your dear 
Kentucky, captain; and that is Tennessee.” 

Nolan bowed, and, this time with no mock feeling, 
kissed the star which the girl pointed out for his own 
State. 

“ May I not fly it to-morrow morning? Was it 
only made for that little sail through the cane- 
brakes? ” 

Nolan’s face clouded a little, — a little more than 
he meant it should. 

“ Just here, and just now,” he said, “ I think we 
had better not show it. Not that I suppose we should 
meet anybody who would care; but they are as stupid 
as owls, and as much frightened as rabbits. It was 
only that very same Monday that we met a whole 
company of Greasers (that is what my men called 
them) ; and we had to show our passports.” 


or, Show your Passports 37 

Inez asked him what he showed; and with quite 
unnecessary precision, — precision which did not 
escape Eunice’s quiet observation, — he told her that 
he had, for his whole party, Governor Pedro de Nava’s 
pass to Texas and to return; that he even had private 
letters from Governor Casa Calvo to Cordero, the 
general in command at the Alamo. Eunice said that 
the marquis had been only too courteous in providing 
her also with a passport for their whole party; he 
would have sent an escort, had his friend Mr. Perry 
suggested. “ Indeed, the whole army was at the ser¬ 
vice of the Donna Eunice, as he tried to say, and 
would have said, had my poor name been possible to 
Spanish lips. Why, Captain Nolan, I have sealing-wax 
enough and parchment enough for a king’s ransom, 
if your papers were not enough for us.” 

“ My good right arm shall write my pass, in answer 
to my prayers,” said Nolan a little grimly. “ Is not 
there some such line as that in your father’s Chapman, 
Miss Inez?” And he bade them good-night, as he 
went to seek his quarters in the wretched cabin by 
the very roar of the rapids, and intimated to the 
ladies that they had best spread their mattresses, and 
be ready for an early start in the morning. 

In truth, Nolan was geographer enough to know 
that the ladies had perhaps shown their flag a little 
too early; but he would not abate a whit of the 
girl’s enthusiasm for what, as he said, and as she said, 
should have been her native land. Even the novel- 
reader of to-day reads with an atlas of maps at his 
side, and expects geographical accuracy even from 
the Princess Scheherezade herself. The reader will 


38 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

understand the precise position, by examining the 
little map below, which is traced from an official 
report of that time. 



The western boundary of the United States was 
the middle of the Mississippi River. The southern 
boundary was the line of 31 0 . The girls knew, as 
everybody knew, where that line crossed the river at 
different points. Was the little projection opposite 
the Red River a part of the United States, or of 
Florida? Inez and Eunice had thought they were 
out of Spanish dominion there. Perhaps they were. 
The reader can judge as well as the best diplomatist. 
Wars have been made out of less material. The sur¬ 
veyors who ran the boundary decided, not with the 
ladies, but with Nolan and Ransom. Maps of that 
time vary; and the river has since abated all contro¬ 
versy, by cutting across the neck of swampy land, and 
making the little peninsula into an island. 

And it was only for the wretched five miles of 
canebrake, between the line of 31 0 and the mouth of 




or. Show your Passports 39 

the Red River, that the eager Inez, by keeping her 
boat on the eastern shore, had even fancied that she 
saw her own land, and was for once breathing what 
should have been her native air. As the boat hauled 
into the Red River, she had hidden her head in 
Eunice’s lap, and had sobbed out, — 

“ This poor child is a girl without a country! ” 


CHAPTER IV 

“SHOW YOUR PASSPORTS !” 

“The pine-tree dreameth of the palm, 

The palm-tree of the pine.” 

Lord Houghton. 

Philip Nolan had his reasons for avoiding long 
tarry at the rapids; and, when the new boat came 
with the party to the little port of Natchitoches, he 
had the same reasons for urging haste in the transfer 
of their equipment there. These reasons he had un¬ 
folded to Eunice, and they were serious. 

After all the plans had been made for this autumn 
journey, — plans which involved fatigue, perhaps, for 
the ladies, but certainly no danger, — the Spanish 
officials of Louisiana on the one side, and of Texas on 
the other, had been seized by one of their periodical 
quaking-fits, — fits of easy depression, which were 
more and more frequent with every year. Nolan had 
come and gone once and again, with Spanish pass¬ 
ports in full form, from the governor of Louisiana. 
The present of a handsome mustang on his return 
would not be declined by that officer; and, as the 


40 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

horse grew older, he would not, perhaps, be averse to 
the chances of another expedition. With just such 
free-conduct was Nolan equipped now; and with his 
party of thirteen men he had started from Natchez on 
the Mississippi, to take up Miss Eunice and Miss Inez 
with their party at Natchitoches, the frontier station 
on the Red River. Just before starting, however, the 
Spanish consul at Natchez had called the party before 
Judge Bruin, the United States judge there, as if they 
were filibusters. But Nolan’s passport from Don 
Pedro de Nava, the commandant of the northeastern 
provinces, was produced; and the judge dismissed 
the complaint. This had been, however, only the 
beginning of trouble. Before Nolan joined the ladies, 
he had hardly passed the Mississippi swamp,— had, 
in fact, travelled only forty miles, — when he met a 
company of fifty Spanish soldiers, who had been sent 
out to stop him. Nolan’s party numbered but twenty- 
one. The Spaniards pretended that they were hunt¬ 
ing lost horses; but, so soon as Nolan’s party passed, 
they had turned westward also, and were evidently 
dogging them. 

It was this unfriendly feeling on the part of those 
whom he was approaching as a friend, which had led 
Nolan to hasten his meeting with Eunice Perry and 
her niece, that he might, before it was too late, ask 
them whether they would abandon their enterprise, 
and return. 

But Eunice boldly said “ No.” Her niece was, 
alas ! a Spanish woman born; she was going to visit 
a Spanish officer on his invitation. If she had to 
show her passports every day, she could show them. 


or. Show your Passports 41 

If Captain Nolan did not think they embarrassed the 
party, she was sure that she would go on; if he did, 
why, she must return, though unwillingly. 

“Not I, indeed, Miss Eunice. You protect us 
where we meant to protect you. Only I do not care 
to cross these Dogberrys more often than I can 
help.” 

So it was determined that they should go on,— 
but go on without the little halt at Natchitoches 
w r hich had been intended. 

Inez shared in all the excitement of a prompt de¬ 
parture, the moment the necessity was communicated 
to her. Before sunrise she was awake, and dressed 
in the prairie dress which had been devised for her. 
The four packs to which she had been bidden to 
confine herself — for two mules, selected and ready 
at L’Ecore — had been packed ever since they left 
Orleans, let it be confessed, by old Ransom’s agency, 
quite as much as by any tire-woman of her train. 
She was only too impatient while old Caesar, the 
cook, elaborated the last river breakfast. She could 
not bear to have Eunice spend so much time in 
directions to the patron, and farewells to the boat¬ 
men, and messages to their wives. When it actually 
came to the spreading a plaster which Tony was to 
take back to his wife, for a sprain she had in her 
shoulder, Inez fairly walked off the boat in her cer¬ 
tainty that she should be cross, even to Eunice, if 
she stayed one minute longer. 

Old Caesar, at the last moment, blubbered and 
broke down. “Leave Miss Inez?” not he. What 
a pity that his voluble Guinea-French is not translat- 


42 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

able into any dialect of the Anglo-American-Norman- 
Creole tongue! Leave her? not he. He had her 
in his arms when she was an hour old. He made 
her first doll out of a bulrush and some raw cotton. 
He taught her to suck sugar-cane; and he picked 
pecan-meats for her before her mother knew that she 
could eat them. Should he leave her to be devoured 
alive by Caddo Indians? “ Jamais! Imposible!” 

“ Come along with us, then,” said Nolan; and he 
indicated the mule which Caesar was to ride. 

And Caesar came; and his history is written in 
with that of Texas for the next ten years. 

As the sun rose, the party gathered in front of the 
little shanty at which the most of the business of the 
landing was done. Ransom himself lifted Inez upon 
her saddle, adjusted the stirrups forty times, as if he 
had not himself cut the holes in the leathers, just as 
Inez bade him, a month before. Nolan watched for 
Eunice’s comfort with the same care. Caesar blub¬ 
bered and bragged, and sent messages to the old 
woman, — messages which, if she ever received them, 
were the food on which she fed for the next decade 
of married life. Nolan was not displeased with the 
make-up of the little party. They were but eight in 
all; but there was not a bad horse, a bad mule, a 
bad man, or a bad woman, in the train, he said. 
What pleased him most was the prompt obedience 
of the women, and the “ shifty ” readiness of the men. 
Old Ransom scolded a good deal, but was in the 
right place at the right time. And so, avoiding the 
village of Natchitoches by an easy detour, the party 
were in the wilderness an hour before the military 


or. Show your Passports 43 

commander of that fort knew that a boat had arrived 
from below, late the night before. 

When the Spanish sentinel who had hailed her 
found that her passengers had all gone westward, he 
thought best not to report their existence to the 
governor; and so Philip Nolan’s first manoeuvre 
to escape frontier Dogberry No. 1 was perfectly 
successful. 

In less than five minutes the whole party were in 
the pines, through which, over a sandy barren, they 
were to ride for two days. It was as if they had 
changed a world. To Eunice, why, the sniff of that 
pine fragrance was the renewal of the old life of her 
childhood. To Inez — not unused to forests, but all 
unused to pine-trees — the calm quiet of all around, 
the aromatic fragrance, the softness of the pine-leaves 
on which her horse’s feet fell, all wrought a charm 
which overpowered the girl. 

“ Don’t speak to me! ” 

And they left her alone. 

“ Does this seem more like home, Ransom?” said 
Nolan, letting his horse stand till the old man, who 
brought up the rear, might join him. 

“ Yes, sir! Pines is pines, though these be poor 
things. Pine-trees down East is n’t crooked as these 
be; good for masts, good for yards; sawed one on 
’em into three pieces when they wanted three masts 
for the ‘ Constitution.’ But these has the right smell. 
These’s good for kindlin’s.” 

“You followed the sea once, Ransom?” 

“Sarved under old Mugford first year of the war; 
was Manly’s bo’s’n when he went out in ’77.” 


44 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ Mugford? ” asked Nolan. “I don’t remember 
him.” 

“ Pity you don’t. Real old sea-dog; wasn’t afraid 
of saltpetre. These fellers now, with their anchors, 
and gold braid on they coat-collars, don’t know 
nothin’. Old Mugford never wore gold lace; didn’t 
have none to wear. Wore a tarpaulin and a pea- 
jacket, when he could git it; ef he couldn’t git it, 
wore nothin’. Real old sea-dog ! ” 

‘‘Where did you cruise? ” 

“All along shore. Went out arter Howe when the 
gineral druv him out of Boston. Kind o’ hung round 
and picked up this vessel and that, that was runnin’ 
into the bay, cos they did n’t know the British was 
gone. Took one vessel with six guns, and no end of 
powder and shot. The old gineral he was glad 
enough of that, he was. No end of powder and 
shot: six guns she had. Took her runnin’ into the 
bay. We was in the ‘ Franklin ’ then.” 

“ Tell us all about it, Ransom.” 

“ That’s all they is to tell. I sighted our nine- 
pounder myself, — hulled her three times, and she 
struck. Old Mugford sent her into Boston, and 
stood off for more.” 

And the old man looked into the sky with that 
wistful look again, as if the very clouds would change 
into armed vessels, and renew the fight; and for a 
moment Nolan thought he would say no more. But 
he humored him. 

“Next mornin’,” said Ransom, after a minute,— 
“ next mornin’, when we was to anchor off the Gut, 
be hanged if they warn’t thirteen boats from some of 


or. Show your Passports 45 

their frigates crawlin’ up to us as soon as the light 
broke. We gin ’em blazes, cap’n. We sunk five on 
’em without askin’ leave. Then they thought they’d 
board us. Better luck ’nother time. Gosh! Poor 
devils caught hold of her gunnel; and we cut off 
their hands with broad-axes, we did.” 

“ And Mugford? ” 

“ Oh! you know Mugford reached arter one on 
’em to cut at his head, and he got stuck just here 
with a boardin’ pike, ’n he called Abel Turner. I 
stood with him in ma own arms. He called Abel 
Turner, and says he, ‘I’m a dead man, Turner: 
don’t give up the vessel. Beat ’em off, beat ’em off. 
You can cut the cable,’ says he, ‘ and run her ashore/ 
Did n’t say ’nother word : fell down dead.” 

Another pause. Nolan humored him still, and said 
nothing. And, after another wistful glance at the 
heavens, the old man went on, — 

“ Turner see the frigate was cornin’ down on him, 
and he run her ashore on Pullin’ Point; and he sot 
fire to her, so that cruise was done. But none o’ them 
fellers was ever piped to grog again, they was n’t; no, 
nor old Mugford, neyther.” 

A long pause, in which Nolan let the old fellow’s 
reminiscences work as they might: he would not 
interrupt him. 

But when he saw the spell had been fairly broken 
by some little detention, as they cared for the ladies 
in the crossing of a “ sloo ” or water-course, Nolan 
said to his old friend cautiously, — 

“ Did you see the general? Did you see General 
Washington when he drove Howe out? 


46 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

Nolan spoke with that kind of veneration for 
Washington’s name which was then, perhaps, at its 
very acme, — at the period when the whole country 
was under the impress of his recent death. 

“ Guess I did. Seen him great many times. I was 
standin’ right by him when he come into the old tavern 
at the head of King Street, jest where the pump is, 
by the Town House. Gage boarded there, and Howe 
and Clinton had they quarters there; and so the 
gineral come there when our army marched in. 

“They was a little gal stood there starin’ at him 
and all the rest; and he took her up, and he kissed 
her, he did. 

“ ’Ne said to her, * Sis, says he, ‘which do you like 
best, the redcoats or the Yankees? ’ ’N the child says, 
says she, she liked the redcoats, the best,— gal-like, 
you know,— cos they looked so nice. ’N he laughed 
right out, ’ne says to her, ‘ Woll,’ says he, ‘ they du 
have the best clothes, but it takes the ragged boys to 
du the fightin’. Oh, I seen him lots o’ times.” 

By this time Nolan thought he might venture to 
join Inez again. She was now talking eagerly with 
her aunt, and seemed to have passed the depressed 
moment which the young soldier had respected, and 
had left to her own resolution. 

The truth was, that a ride through a pine-forest in 
beginning a journey so adventurous, with no immedi¬ 
ate possibility of a return to her father’s care, had 
started the girl on the train of memories and other 
thoughts which stirred her most completely. For 
her mother she had a veneration, but it was simply 
for an ideal being. For her aunt she had an idola- 


or. Show your Passports 47 

trous enthusiasm, which her aunt wholly deserved. 
For the French and Spanish ladies and gentlemen 
around her, in their constant wars and jealousies with 
each other, she had even an undue contempt. Her 
father’s central and profound interest in his own coun¬ 
try and its prosperity came down to her in the form 
of a chivalrous passion for people she had never seen, 
and institutions and customs which she knew only in 
the theory or the idea. It would be hard, indeed, to 
tell whether her Aunt Eunice’s more guarded narrative 
of her early life, or old Ransom’s wild exaggerations 
of the glories of New England, had the most to do 
with a loyalty for the newly born nation which the 
girl found few ways to express, and indeed few ears 
to listen to. 

Such a dreamer found herself now, for the first 
time, in the weird silence of a pine-forest, which she 
fancied must be precisely like the silent pine-groves 
of her father’s home. Nor was any one cruel enough 
to undeceive her by pointing out the differences. 
She could hear the soughing of the wind, as if it had 
been throwing up the waves upon the beach. Her 
horse’s feet fell noiseless on the brown carpet of 
leaves below her. And she was the centre, if not the 
commander, of a party all loyal to her, — strangers 
in a strange land, threatened perhaps, as it seemed, 
by the minions of this king she despised, though it 
was her bad luck to be born under his banner. 

“ Surely,” she said to herself, “ I am escaping from 
my thraldom, if it be only for a few days. I am a 
woman now, and in these forests, at least, I am an 
American.” 



48 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

In this mood Nolan found her. 

“You have been talking with my dear old Ran¬ 
som, Captain Nolan.” 

“ Yes: he has been telling me of his battles. Did 
you know how often the old fellow has been under 
fire?” 

“ Know it? Could I not tell you every shot he 
fired in the ‘Franklin’? Don’t I know every word 
of Mugford’s, and every cruise of Manly’s? I love 
to make him tell those old stories. Captain Nolan, 
why did we not live in such times? ” 

“ Perhaps we do.” 

“ Do? I wish I thought so ! ” cried the girl. “ The 
only battles I see are the madame superior’s battles 
with his excellency the governor, whether the Donna 
Louisa shall learn a French verb or not. I am sick 
of their lies and their shilly-shally: are not you? ” 

“There is no harm in saying to you that for two 
years I have been hoping to lead a hundred riflemen 
down this very trail.” 

“Thank you, Captain Nolan, for saying something 
which sounds so sensible. Take my hand upon it, 
and count me for number one when the time comes 
to enlist. Have you been in battle, captain? or are 
you a captain like — ” And she paused. 

Nolan laughed. 

“ Like the governor’s aids yonder, with their 
feathers and their gold lace? Woe’s me, Miss Inez ! 
the powder I have burned has been sometimes under 
fire from the Comanches, sometimes when I did not 
choose to be scalped by another redskin, but nothing 
that you would call war.” 


or, Show your Passports 49 

“ But you have been in the army. You brought 
Captain Pope to our house, and Lieutenant Pike.” 

“ Oh, yes ! If being with army men will help you, 
count me one. A good many of the older officers 
were in the war, you know. General Wilkinson was, 
and Colonel Freeman was. There is no end to their 
talk of war days. But I — I did nothing but train, 
as we called it, with the volunteers at Frankfort, when 
we thought the Indians would burn us out of house 
and home.” 

“Did you never — did you never — Captain Nolan, 
don’t think it a foolish question — did you never see 
Washington? ” 

“ Oh, no! ” he said, with a tone that showed her 
that he would not laugh at her eagerness. “ But 
these men have : Wilkinson has; Freeman has. They 
will talk by the hour to you about what he said and 
did. I wish they had all loved him as well then as 
they say they did now. But really, Miss Inez, I do 
believe that, in the trying times that are just now 
coming, young America is going to be true to old 
America. These twenty years have not been for 
nothing.” 

“ Say it again,” said the girl, with more feeling 
than can be described. 

“ Why, what goes there?” cried Nolan. 

He dashed forward; but this time old Ransom 
rose before him, and was the person to receive the 
challenge of a Spanish trooper. 

The man was in the leathern garments of the wil¬ 
derness; but he had a sash round his waist, a cock¬ 
ade in his hat, and a short carbine swinging at his 
4 


50 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

saddle, distinct enough evidences that he belonged 
to the Spanish army. In a moment more, the whole 
group of cavaliers approached him, so that the con¬ 
versation, if such it may be called, which he began 
with Ransom, was continued by others of the party. 

The Spanish horseman volubly bade them stop in 
the king’s name, and show who they were. He had 
orders to arrest all travellers, and turn them back. 

“What did you tell him, Ransom?” said Eunice, 
as soon as she came up. 

“ Told him to go and be hanged. Told him he 
had n’t got no orders to arrest us, cos the gov’ner 
had sent us. Told him he did n’t know nothin’ about 
it. Ye brother hed made it all right with the gov’ner, 
and had gone to see the king about it. Wen I told 
him about the king, he seemed frightened, and said 
he would see.” 

The appearance of the Spanish sergeant was indeed 
a surprise to all parties. Nolan had told Eunice that 
they should meet no one before they came to the 
Sabine River, and that he would keep himself out of 
the way when that time came; and now they had 
stumbled on just such another party as he met the 
week before, sent out, as it would seem, simply to 
look after him. Eunice, however, was quite ready 
for the emergency. 

She saluted the Spanish sergeant most courteously, 
apologized in a few well-chosen words of very good 
Castilian for her servant’s “ impetuosity,” and gave 
to the sergeant a little travelling-bag which had 
swung at her saddle, telling him, that, if he would 
open it, he would find the pass which the Marquis 


or, Show your Passports 5 I 

of Casa Calvo had provided for them, and his recom¬ 
mendation to any troops of General Cordero. 

“ I cannot be grateful enough,” she said, “ to the 
good Providence which has so soon given to us the 
valorous protection of the chivalrous soldiers of 
the king of Spain.” 

The sergeant bowed, a good deal surprised, did 
not say he could not read, as he might have said 
with truth; but, touching his hat with courtesy, 
turned to an officer approaching him, whose dress 
had rather more of cloth and rather less of leather 
than his own, and indicated that he would show the 
passport to him. 

Captain Morales opened and scrutinized both 
papers, returned them silently to the leather satchel, 
and with a low bow, gave it back to Eunice. 

“ This is a sufficient pass for yourself, my lady, and 
for the senorita who accompanies you, and for your 
party. How many of these gentlemen and servants 
are of your party? My officer here will fill out the 
verbal catalogue, which the secretary of the marquis 
has omitted.” 

“ Let me present the Senorita Perry, my niece. 
Here is my major-domo; these three are servants 
with their duties in her household; the old negro 
yonder is our cook.” 

The lieutenant entered on his tablet this answer, 
and Captain Morales said, — 

“ And who is the hidalgo behind you, — the gen¬ 
tleman who says nothing? ” 


5 2 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER V 

SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS 

“ My heart’s uneasiness is simply told, — 

I hate the Greeks, although they give me gold : 

This firm right hand shall foil my foemen’s ends, 

If Heaven will kindly save me from my friends.” 

After Dryden. 

“ Let me present my friend,” said Eunice at once, 
without the slightest confusion. 

Nolan meanwhile was sitting listlessly on his horse, 
as if he did not understand one word of the colloquy. 

“ Monsieur Philippe ! Monsieur Philippe ! ” cried 
Eunice, turning to him eagerly; and, as he rode up, 
she addressed him in French, saying, “Let me pre¬ 
sent you to Captain Morales.” 

And then to this officer, — 

“ This is my friend, Monsieur Philippe, a partner 
of my brother in his business, to whom in his absence 
in -Paris he has left the charge of us ladies. He is 
kind enough to act as the intendant of our little 
party. May I ask you to address him in French? ” 

In this suggestion Captain Morales, who was already 
a little suspicious when he found a woman conduct¬ 
ing the principal conversation of this interview, found 
a certain excuse. The Spanish officers in the govern¬ 
ment of Louisiana all spoke French, as the people 
did who were under their command. They were, 
indeed, in large measure chosen from the Low Coun¬ 
tries, that they might be at home in that language. 


or. Show your Passports 53 

But there was no reason for such selection in the 
appointment of officers who served in Mexico, like 
Morales; nor could Eunice, at the first glance, be 
Supposed to know whether he spoke French or not 

In truth he did speak that language very ill. And, 
after a stately “ Bon jour” his first questions to 
Monsieur Philippe halted and broke so badly that 
with a courtly smile he excused himself, and said 
that if the lady would have the goodness to act as 
interpreter, he would avail himself of her mediation. 

“ Your name is not mentioned on this lady’s pass¬ 
port, Monsieur Philippe.” 

“ I was not in Orleans when it was granted. It is, 
I believe, a general permit to the Donna Eunice 
Perry and her party.” 

“Have you, then, lately arrived from Paris?” 

“ The worshipful Don Silas has just now sailed for 
Paris. For myself, I only overtook the ladies, by the 
aid of horses often changed, at the rapids of the Red 
River. I count myself fortunate that I overtook 
them. His Excellency was himself pleased to direct 
me to use every means at his command in their 
service, and I have done so.” 

Nolan would not have said this were it not true. 
Strange to say, it was literally and perfectly true. 
For one of the absurdities of the divided command 
which gave Louisiana to one Spanish governor, and 
Texas to another, at this time, was the preposterous 
jealousy which maintained between these officers a 
sort of armed or guarded relation, as if one were a 
Frenchman because his province had a French name, 
and only the other were a true officer of the Catholic 


54 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

king, — an absurdity, but not an unusual absurdity. 
Just such an absurdity, not twenty years before, made 
the discord between Cornwallis and Clinton, which 
gave to Washington the victory of Yorktown, and 
gave to America her independence. 

So was it, that, while the Marquis of Casa Calvo 
at New Orleans was Nolan’s cordial friend, Elguesebal 
in Texas and De Nava at Chihuahua were watching 
and dogging him as an enemy. 

“ Will my lady ask the hidalgo what was the 
public news in Paris? Our two crowns, — or, rather, 
his Catholic Majesty’s crown and the First Consul 
of France, — they are in good accord? What were 
the prospects of the treaty? ” 

“ France and Spain were never better friends,” re¬ 
plied Nolan, “ if all is true that seems. The public 
journals announce the negotiations of a treaty. Of 
its articles more secret, even the Captain Morales will 
pardon me if I do not speak. He will respect my 
confidence.” 

The truth was, that even at this early moment a 
suspicion was haunting men’s minds, of what was 
true before the month was over, — that by the treaty 
of Ildefonso the Spanish king would cede the terri¬ 
tory of Louisiana to Napoleon. 

Captain Morales had heard some rumor of this pol¬ 
icy, even in Nacogdoches. The allusion to it made by 
Nolan confirmed him in his first suspicion, that this 
young Frenchman who could speak no Spanish was 
some unavowed agent of the First Consul, Napoleon. 

If he were, it was doubtless his own business to 
treat him with all respect. 


or, Show your Passports 55 

At the moment, therefore, that Nolan confessed he 
must speak with reserve, the Spaniard’s doubts as to 
his character gave way entirely. He offered his 
hand frankly to the young Frenchman, and bade him 
and the lady rely on his protection. 

“Your party is quite too small,” he said. “I am 
only sorry that I cannot detail a fit escort for you. 
But I am charged with a special duty, — the arrest 
of an American freebooter who threatens us with an 
army of Kenny—Kenny — tuckians. The Ameri¬ 
cans have such hard names ! They are indeed allies 
of the savages. But I will order four of my troopers 
to accompany you to Nacogdoches, and the com¬ 
mandant there can do more for you.” 

Nolan and Eunice joined in begging him not to 
weaken his force. They were quite sufficient for 
their own protection, they said. The servants were 
none of them cowards, and had had some experience 
with their weapons. But the captain was firm in his 
Castilian politeness; and, as any undue firmness on 
their part in rejecting so courteous an offer must 
awaken his suspicions, they were obliged to comply 
with his wish, and accept the inopportune escort 
which he provided for them. 

Inez, meanwhile, wild with curiosity and excite¬ 
ment, as the colloquy passed through its different 
stages of suspicion and of confidence, had not dared 
express her fear, her amusement, or her surprise, 
even by a glance. She saw it was safest for her to 
drop her veil, and to sit the impassive Castilian 
maiden, fresh from a nunnery, which Captain Morales 
supposed her to be, 


56 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

As for old Ransom, the major-domo of Eunice’s 
establishment, he sat at a respectful distance, heeding 
every word of the conversation, in whatever language 
it passed, with a face as free from expression as the 
pine-knot on the tree next him. Once and again he 
lifted his eyes to the heavens with that wistful look 
of his, which was rather the glance of an astronomer 
than of a devotee. But the general aspect of the 
man was of an impatient observer of events, who had 
himself, Cassandra-like, stated in advance what must 
be and was to be, and was now grieved that he must 
await the slow processes of meaner intelligences. 

At last his patience was relieved. Captain Morales 
drew from his haversack a slip of paper, on which 
he wrote: — 


“By order of the King : 

Know all men, that the Lady Eunice and Lady Inez, with 
Monsieur Philippe, the intendant of their household, with 
one Ransom and four other servants, have free 
Pass and Escort 

to the King’s loyal city of San Antonio de 

Bexar under direction of the military commandant, and 
after inspection by me. Morales, 

Captain of Artillery. 

Long live the King ! ” 


He then told off a corporal or sergeant with three 
troopers, and bade them, nothing loath, accompany 
the Orleans party to Nacogdoches. He gave his 
hand courteously to the Senora Eunice and Monsieur 
Philippe, touched his hat as courteously to the 
Senorita Inez, and even threw his party into military 




or, Show your Passports 57 

order as the others passed, and gave them a military 
salute as his last farewell, 

“ Save me from my friends,” said Nolan, as he 
joined the Donna Eunice after this formality was 
over, and each party was out of sight of each other. 
“ Save me from my friends! This civility of your 
friend the captain is more inconvenient to us than 
the impudence of my captain on the prairie yonder.” 

“ I see it is,” said Eunice thoughtfully. “ I am 
afraid I have done wrong. But really, Captain Nolan, 
I was so eager to take you under our protection— I 
knew my brother would be so glad to serve you — I 
thought the governor had this very purpose in his 
mind — that I thought, even if the truth was for once 
good policy, I would tell him the truth still.” 

And she pretended to laugh, but she almost cried. 

“ Of course you could tell him nothing else,” said he. 

“ Indeed I could not. Nobody could ask me actu¬ 
ally to betray you by name to your enemies.” 

“ I hope not,” said the Kentuckian, laughing with¬ 
out reserve. “ If indeed they are my enemies. I wish 
I could tell them at sight. If they would show their 
colors as they make us show ours, it would be well and 
good,” he added. “ If, when we see a buckskin rascal 
with the King of Spain’s cockade, he would wear a 
feather besides, to say whether he is a Texan Spaniard 
or an Orleans Spaniard, that would do. But pray do 
not be anxious, Miss Eunice. My anxieties are almost 
over now. I can take good care of myself, and the 
King of Spain seems likely to take care of you. I 
am well disposed to believe old Ransom, that your 
father has gone to the king to tell him all about it.” 


58 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Eunice said that she did not see how he could 
speak so. How could he bring his party up to them, 
if there were these four spies hanging on all the 
way? 

“ I can see,” replied Nolan, laughing, “ that dear 
Ransom would like nothing better than to blow out 
their brains, and throw them all into the next creek. 
But really that is a very ungracious treatment of men 
who only want to take care of fair ladies. We must 
not be jealous of their attentions.” 

Then he added more seriously, — 

“ I am afraid this meeting may cut off from me 
the pleasure of many such rides as this; and, believe 
me, I have looked forward eagerly to more of them 
than was reason. As soon as these fellows will spare 
me, I must ride across and meet my party, and warn 
them not to come too near your line of travel. But 
I can put another ‘ intendant ’ in my place, and, if 
need be, more than one; and I can leave you the 
satisfaction, if it is any, to know that I am not far 
away.” 

“If it is any! What would my brother think, if 
he did not suppose that five of you were behind 
Inez, and five before, five on the right hand, and five 
on the left? Still I suppose we are perhaps even 
safer now.” This somewhat anxiously. 

“Dear Miss Eunice, you arc never so safe in this 
world as when you make no pretence of strength, 
while in truth you are well guarded. When I am 
weak, then I am strong.” This he said with his 
voice dropping, and very reverently. “If this is true 
in the greatest things, if it is true in trials where the 


or. Show your Passports 59 

Devil is nearest, all the more is it true in the wilder¬ 
ness. A large party, with the fuss of its encampment, 
attracts every Bedouin savage and every cut-throat 
Greaser within a hundred miles. They come together 
like crows. But a handful of people like yours will 
most likely ride to San Antonio without seeing sav¬ 
age or Christian, except such as are at the fort and 
the ferries. Then, the moment these four gentlemen 
are tired of you, I shall be in communication, and 
my men in buckram will appear.” 

“ Men in buckram! that is too bad,” said Inez, 
who had joined their colloquy. “ Where may your 
men in buckram be just now?” 

“ They are a good deal nearer to us than your 
admirer, Captain Morales, supposes. But he is riding 
away from them as fast as he can ride, and they are 
riding away from him at a pace more moderate. You 
shall see, Miss Inez, when the camping-time comes, 
whether my men are in buckram, in broadcloth, or 
in satin.” 

Sure enough, when the sun was within an hour of 
setting, as that peerless October day went by, the 
little party, passing out from a tract rather more 
thickly wooded than usual, came out upon a lovely 
glade, where the solitude was broken. Two tents 
were pitched, and on one of them a little blue flag 
floated. Three or four men in leathern hunting- 
shirts were lying on the ground, but sprang to their 
feet the moment the new party appeared. 

“ My lady is at home,” said Nolan, resuming the 
mock air of formal courtesy with which he and Inez 
so often amused themselves, “ My backwoodsmen 


60 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

have come in advance, as Puss in Boots did to 
arrange for my lady’s comfort.” 

“Are these your men? You are too careful, 
captain, or too careless, I do not know which to say, 
— too careful for me, and too careless for your own 
safety.” 

“ That for my safety,” said the reckless young man, 
snapping his fingers. “ If your ladyship sleeps well, 
we ask nothing more. To say true, my lady, I am 
the most timid of men: praise me for my prudence. 
Were I not caution personified, I should have com¬ 
manded William yonder to fly the stars and stripes 
over your majesty’s tent. But I had care for your 
majesty’s comfort. I knew these Greasers would 
know those colors too well.” 

“ And he has! and he has! Oh, you are good, 
Captain Nolan! — See, aunty, the flag that flies 
over us.” 

There is many a girl in Massachusetts who reads 
these words, who does not know that the flag of her 
own State displays on a blue field a shield bearing an 
Indian proper and a star argent — which means an 
Indian painted in his own manner as he is, and a star 
of silver. But in those days each State had had to 
subsist for itself, even to strike its own coin, and often 
to fight under its own flag; and this New England 
girl, who had never seen New England, knew the 
cognizance of her own land as well as the Lotties 
and Fannies and Aggies — the Massachusetts girls 
of to-day — know the cognizance of England or of 
Austria. 

“Welcome home, ladies,” said the tall, handsome 



or, Show your Passports 61 

young soldier, who took Eunice’s horse by the head, 
while Nolan lifted her from the saddle. 

“ This is the ladies’ own tent, captain. We have 
set the table in the other.” And the ladies passed in 
at the tent-door to find the hammocks swung for 
them, two camp-stools open, a little table cut with a 
hatchet from the bark of large pines, and covered 
with a white napkin, on which stood ready a candle¬ 
stick and a tinder-box; and another rough table like 
it, with a tin basin full of water; and two large 
gourds, tightly corked, on the pine carpet at its side. 

“ We are in a palace,” cried Inez. “ How can we 
thank these gentlemen enough for their care ? ” 

“ I must tell you who they are. — Why, William, 
where have the others gone? — Miss Eunice, Miss 
Inez, this is my other self, William Harrod. William, 
you knew who these ladies were long before you saw 
them. Ladies, if I told you that William Harrod was 
Ephraim Harrod’s brother, it would not help you. If 
I said he was the best marksman in the great valley, 
you would not care. When I say he is the best 
fellow that lives, you must believe me.” 

“ Leave them to find that out, captain.” 

“ The captain tells enough when he says you are 
his other self. In a country like this, one is glad to 
find two Philip Nolans.” 

Old Ransom and his party, meanwhile, were a little 
disgusted that the preparations they had made for the 
mistress’s accommodation on her first night away 
from the river should be thus put in the shade by the 
unexpected encampment on which they had lighted. 
Before their journey was finished, they were glad 


62 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

enough to stumble on cattle-shed or abandoned camp 
which might save them from the routine of uncording 
and cording up their tents; but to be anticipated on 
the very first night of camp-life was an annoyance. 
When, however, Ransom found that these were Cap¬ 
tain Nolan’s people, and that the preparation had been 
dictated by his forethought, his brow cleared, and the 
severe animadversions by which he had at first con¬ 
demned every arrangement changed, more suddenly 
than the wind changes, into expressions of approval 
as absolute. 

While the ladies were preparing for the supper, 
Ransom amused himself with the Spanish soldiers. 

One of them had asked what the flag was which 
was displayed above the ladies’ tent. 

“Ignorant nigger! ” said Ransom afterward, as he 
detailed the conversation to Miss Eunice. (The man 
was no more a negro than Ransom was; but it was 
his habit to apply this phrase to all persons of a 
Southern race.) “ Ignorant nigger! I axed him ef 
he did n’t know the private signal uv his own king. 
I told him the King uv Spain, when he went out to 
ride with the ladies uv the court, or when he sot at 
dinner in his own pallis, had that ’ere flag flyin’ over 
his throne. I told him that he gin your brother a 
special permit to use it, wen he gin him the star of 
San Iago for wot he did in the war with the pirates.” 

“ Ransom ! how could you ! ” said Eunice, trying 
to look forbidding, while Inez was screaming with 
delight, and beckoning to her new friend, Mr. Harrod, 
to listen. 

“ Only way with ’em, marm. They all lies; and, 


or. Show your Passports 63 

ef you don’t lie to ’em, they dunno wot you mean. 
Answer a fool accordin’ to his folly, is the rule, mum. 
Heerd it wen I was a boy. Wen I ’m in Turkey, I 
do as the turkeys do, marm; they ain’t no other 
way. They all lies ! ” 

Caesar appeared, grinning, and said that supper was 
ready. One of Harrod’s aids stood at the door of the 
second of his tents, saluted as his officer and Nolan 
led the ladies in; and Caesar and Ransom followed, 
— Caesar to wait upon the hungry travellers, and 
Ransom in his general capacity of major-domo, or 
critic-in-chief of all that was passing. 

“We give you hunters’ fare,” said Nolan, who took 
the place and bearing of the host at the entertain¬ 
ment; “ but you have earned your appetites.” 

“It would be hard if two poor girls could not be 
satisfied with roasted turkey; with venison, if that be 
venison; with quails, if those be quails; and with 
rabbits, if those be rabbits, — let alone the grapes and 
melons. You must have thought we had the appetite 
of the giant Blunderbore.” 

“I judged your appetite by my own,” said Nolan, 
laughing. “ As for Harrod, he is a lady’s man: he 
has no appetite; but perhap.s he will pick a bone of 
the merry-thought of this intimation of a partridge; ” 
and he laid the bone on the plate of his laughing 
friend. 

The truth was that the feast was a feast for kings. 
It was served with Caesar’s nicest finish, and with the 
more useful science and precision of the hunters. 
Ransom had made sure that a little travelling table- 
service, actually of silver, should be packed for the 



64 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

ladies; and in this forest near the Sabine, under their 
canvas roof, they ate from a board as elegantly 
appointed as any in Orleans or in Mexico, partaking 
of fare more dainty than either city could command. 
So much for the hardships of the first day of the 
campaign. 


CHAPTER VI 

GOOD-BY 

“The rule of courtesy is thus expressed : 

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.” 

Menelaus in the Odyssey. 

“ When hunger now and thirst were fully satisfied,” 
Nolan called Ransom to him, and asked the old man 
in an undertone where the Spanish soldiers were. 

“They’s off by they own fire. Made a fire for 
theyselves. The men asked ’em to supper, and gin 
’em all the bacon and whiskey they’d take. Poor 
devils ! don’t often have none. Now they’s made they 
own fire, and is gamblin’ there.” 

By the word “ gambling,” Ransom distinguished 
every game of cards, however simple. In this case, 
however, it is probable that he spoke within the 
mark. 

“ Then we can talk aloud,” said Nolan. “ A tent 
has but one fault, — that you are never by yourself 
in it. You do not know what redskin or panther is 
listening to you.” 

Then he went on : — 


or. Show your Passports 65 

“ William, I have kept myself well out of these 
rascals’ sight all the afternoon. I have not looked in 
their faces, and they have not looked in mine. For 
this I had my reasons. And I think, and I believe 
the ladies will think, that if you put on my cap and 
this hunting-shirt to-morrow, and permit me to borrow 
that more elegant equipment of yours, — if you will 
even take to yourself the name and elegant bearing 
of ‘ Monsieur Philippe,’ supposed charge d'affaires of 
the Consul Bonaparte, and certainly partner of Mr. 
Silas Perry, — you may serve the ladies as well as at 
the Spanish guard-house yonder; and I shall serve 
them better even than you, in returning for a day or 
two to our friends in buckram.” 

The ladies asked with some eagerness the reasons 
for such a change; but in a moment they were satis¬ 
fied that Nolan was in the right. Any stray officer 
at the fort might recognize him, well known as he 
was all along the frontier, and on both sides of it; and, 
on the other hand, his own direction to his own party 
was, of course, the most valuable to all concerned. 
There was some laugh at the expense of the forest 
gear which was to be changed. The fringes to the 
hunting-skirts were of different dyes; one hat bore a 
rabbit’s tail, and one the feather of a cardinal; but, 
for the two men, they were within a pound of the 
same weight, and a hair-breadth of the same size, as 
Harrod said, and he said it proudly. 

“ My other self, I told you,” said Nolan; and then 
he assumed the mock protector, and charged the 
ladies that they must go to bed for an early start in 
the morning. 


5 


66 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

At sunrise, accordingly, the pretty little camp was 
on the alert. All the tents, except those of the 
ladies, were struck before they were themselves awake. 
Their toilet was not long, though it was elaborate; 
and when Inez stepped out from her sleeping-apart¬ 
ment, and looked in to see the progress breakfast had 
made, she was provoked with herself that she was the 
first person deceived by the new-made Dromio. 

She slyly approached Mr. Harrod, who stood at 
the table with his back to her, tapped him smartly 
on the shoulder, and said, — 

“ Philopcena ! Captain Nolan, my memory is bet¬ 
ter than you think ”— to have the handsome “ other 
self” turn round, and confuse her with his good- 
natured welcome. 

“ Philopcena! indeed, Miss Perry, but it was not I 
who ate the almond with you.” 

“ To think it,” said the girl, “ that a bird’s feather 
and a strip of purple leather should change one man 
into another! Well, I thought I was a better scout. 
Do you know I enlisted among Captain Nolan’s rifles 
yesterday? If only my Well-beloved sovereign would 
make war with you freemen, he would not find me 
among his guards.” 

The girl’s whole figure was alive; and Harrod un¬ 
derstood at once that she did not dislike the half- 
equivocal circumstances in which they stood, — of 
measuring strength and wit against the officers of the 
Spanish king. 

Breakfast was as elegant and dainty as supper; 
but the impetuous and almost‘imperious Inez could 
not bear that they should sit so long. For herself, 


or, Show your Passports 67 

she could and would take but one cup of coffee. 
How people could sit so over their coffee, she 
could not see! “Another slice from the turkey?” 
No! Had she not eaten corn-cake and venison, and 
grapes and fricasseed rabbit, all because Ransom had 
cooked or gathered them himself for her? Would 
dear Aunt Eunice never be done? 

Dear Aunt Eunice only laughed, and waited for her 
second cup to cool, and sipped it by teaspoonfuls, 
and folded her napkin as leisurely as if she had been 
on the plantation, and as if none of them had any¬ 
thing to do but to look at their watches till the hour 
for lunch-time came. 

“ Miss Perry,” said Harrod to her, “ I believe you 
are a soldier’s daughter?” 

“Indeed I am,” said Eunice heartily, and then, 
with a laugh, “ and a rifleman’s aunt, I understand, or 
a rifle-woman’s.” 

“ Anyway, you dear old plague, you have at last 
drunk the last drop even you can pretend you want, 
and I do believe you have given the last fold to that 
napkin. — Gentlemen, shall we not find it pleasanter 
in the air? ” 

And she dropped a mock courtesy to them, sprang 
out of the tent singing,— 

“ Hark, hark, tantivy : to horse, my brave boys, and away! ” 

And away they went The same delicious fra¬ 
grance of the pines; the exquisite freshness of morn¬ 
ing; the song of birds not used to travellers; the 
glimpses now and then of beasts four-footed, who 
were scarcely afraid! Everything combined to in- 


68 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

spirit the young people, and to make Inez rate at 
its very lowest the danger and the fatigue of the 
expedition. 

Until they should come to the neighborhood of the 
Spanish post at San Augustine, the two united parties 
were to remain together. To the escort provided by 
the eagerness or suspicion of Captain Morales, the 
rencontre of the night before was only the ordinary 
incident of travel, in which two parties of friends had 
met each other and encamped together. That they 
should make one body as they went on the next day, 
was simply a matter of course. Nolan, therefore, had 
the pleasure of one day’s more travel with his friends; 
and, if the ladies had had any sense of insecurity, 
they would have had the relief of his presence and 
that of his backwoodsmen. But at this period they 
had no such anxiety except for him. 

With laugh and talk and song of the four, therefore, 
varied by more serious colloquy as they fell into 
couples, two and two, the morning passed by; and 
Inez and Eunice were both surprised when the ex¬ 
perienced backwoodsmen ordered the halt for lunch. 
They could not believe that they had taken half the 
journey for the day. But the order was given; the 
beasts were relieved of their packs; a shaded and 
sheltered spot was chosen for the ladies’ picnic; and 
to Ransom was given this time all the responsibility 
and all the glory of their meal. 

It was hardly begun, when, from the turn which 
screened the trail on the west, there appeared an 
Indian on horseback; and, as Nolan sprang to his feet 
to welcome him, the rest of a considerable party of 


or, Show your Passports 69 

Indians, men and women and children, with all the 
paraphernalia of an encampment, appeared. 

The leading man, whose equipment and manner 
showed that, so far as any one ranked as chief of the 
little tribe, he assumed that honor, came readily for¬ 
ward ; and, after a minute’s survey, at Nolan’s invita¬ 
tion he dismounted, and did due honor to a draught 
of raw West Indian rum which Nolan offered him in 
one of the silver cups which he took from the table. 
But, when Nolan addressed him in some gibberish 
which he said the Caddoes would understand, the 
chief intimated that he did not know what he meant. 
He did this by holding his hand before his face with 
the palm outward, and shaking it to and fro. 

Nolan was a connoisseur in Indian dialects, and 
tried successively three or four different jargons; but 
the chief made the sign of dissent to each, and inti¬ 
mated that he was a Lipan. Nolan had tried him in 
the dialects of the Adeyes, the Natchez, and the 
Caddoes, with which he himself was sufficiently 
familiar. 

“ Lipan! ” he said aloud to his friends. “ What 
devil has sent the Lipans so far out of their way? ” 

With the other, he dropped the effort to speak in 
articulate language, and fell into a graceful and rapid 
pantomime, which the chief immediately understood, 
which Harrod followed with interest, and sometimes 
joined in, and in which two or three other lesser chiefs, 
still sitting on their horses, took their part as well. 

Nothing could be more curious than this silent, 
rapid, and animated colloquy. Inez and Eunice 
looked from face to face, wholly unable to follow the 


yo Philip Nolan's Friends; 

play of the conversation, but certain that to all the 
interlocutors it was entirely intelligible. To all the 
tribes west of the river, indeed, there was this com¬ 
mon languageof pantomime, intelligible to all, though 
their dialects were of wholly distinct families of lan¬ 
guage. It still subsists among the southern Indians 
of the plains, and is perhaps intelligible to all the 
tribes on this side the Rocky Mountains. 1 

Hands, arms, and fingers were kept in rapid move¬ 
ment as the colloquy went on. The men bent for¬ 
ward and back, from right to left, now used the right 
arm, now the left, seemed to describe figures in the 
air, or tapped with one hand upon the other. An 
open hand seemed to mean one thing, a closed hand 
another. The forefinger was pointed to one eye, or 
to the forehead, or to the ear, now to the sun, now to 
the earth. All the fingers of one hand would be set 
in rapid motion, while the other hand indicated, as 
occasion might require, the earth, the sky, a lake, or 
a river. 

The whole group of whites and negroes on the 
one hand, and of “ redskins ” on the other, joined in 
a circle about the five principal conversers. Harrod’s 
party had some slight understanding of the language, 
and occasionally gave some slight interpretation to 
their companions as to what was going on. All the 
Indians understood it in full, and, by grunts and 


1 The fullest account of this language of pantomime is probably 
from Philip Nolan’s own pen. It is preserved in the Sixth Volume of 
the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, and is the 
most considerable literary work known to me by this accomplished 
young man. 


or, Show your Passports 71 

sighs, expressed their concurrence in the sentiments 
of their leaders. 

The interest reached its height, when Nolan took 
the right hand of the savage chief, passed it under his 
hunting-shirt and the flannel beneath it, so that it 
rested on the naked heart. Both smiled as if with 
pleasure; and after an instant, by a reversal of the 
manoeuvre, Nolan placed his hand on the heart of 
the Indian. Here was an indication, from each to 
the other, that each heart beat true. 

After this ceremony, Nolan called one of the scouts 
from Harrod’s party, and bade him bring a jug from 
their own stores, Then turning to Eunice, he said, — 

“ Pray let all the redskin chiefs drink from your 
silver. I had a meaning in using this cup when I 
‘ treated ’ Long-Tail here. And now none of them 
must feel that we hold ourselves above them. Perhaps 
they do not know that silver rates higher than horn 
in the white men’s calendar, but perhaps they do.” 

Eunice had caught the idea already. She had 
placed five silver cups on a silver salver, and so soon 
as the liquor arrived gave them to the scout to fill. 
The chiefs, if they were chiefs, grunted their satis¬ 
faction. Nolan then, with a very royal air, passed 
down their whole line, and gave to each a bright red 
ribbon. It was clear enough that most of them had 
never seen such finery. The distribution of it was 
welcomed much as it would have been by children; 
and after a general grunt, expressive of their satisfac¬ 
tion, the chief resumed his seat on horseback, and 
the party took up its line of march again. 

“ I asked them where they were going, and they 


72 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

lied; I asked them where they came from, and they 
lied,” said Nolan a little anxiously, as he resumed his 
own place by the out-spread blanket, which was serv¬ 
ing for a tablecloth on the ground. 

“They are hunting Panis,” said Harrod; “and 
they did not want to say so, because they supposed 
we were Spaniards. But I never knew Lipans so far 
down on this trail before.” 

“ No,” said Nolan : “ I have never met Lipans but 
once or twice, —you know when.” 

“ I thought you were going to show them what was 
in your heart.” 

Nolan laughed, and turned to the ladies. 

“ You would like to know what is in my heart, Miss 
Inez, would you not? How gladly would I know 
what is in yours! To say truth, like most of us, I 
was not quite ready for the exposure; and perhaps 
these rascals knew a little more than is best for them. 

‘ A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ ” 

“What are you talking about? ” said Inez. “I 
hate riddles, unless I can guess them.” 

Nolan produced from a secret fold in his pouch a 
little convex mirror, highly polished, with long cords 
attached to it. 

“ The memory of man does not tell how long ago 
it was that one of the French chiefs tied such a mirror 
as this on his heart. Then, in a palaver with a red¬ 
skin, monsieur said he would show him what was in 
his heart, stripped his breast, bade ‘ Screaming Eagle ’ 
look, and, lo ! ‘ Screaming Eagle’ himself was there. 
The ‘One-Horned Buffalo’ looked, and lo! ‘One- 
Horned Buffalo ’ was there.” 


or. Show your Passports 73 

“ Lucky they knew themselves by sight,” said 
Eunice. 

“ I have often thought of that. They would not 
have known their own eyes and nose and mouth. 
But they did know their feathers, their war-paint, and 
the rest; and from that moment he enjoyed immense 
renown with them. 

“ Nor do I count it a lie,” said Nolan, after a pause. 
“ What is all language but signs, just such as we have 
all been using? Here was a sign carefully wrought 
out, like the ‘ totem,’ or star of the ‘ Golden Fleece,’ 
which, according to Ransom, the king will give to 
your father, Miss Inez. 

“ I am sure I have them all in my heart. I am 
very fond of them, and I wish them well so long as 
they are not scalping me; and, when I am far 
enough from trading-houses, I do not scrupleto use 
the glass on my heart, as the best symbol by which 
I can say so.” 

As they resumed the saddle, Inez begged her 
friends to tell her more of this beautiful language' of 
signs. 

“ It is twenty times as graceful as the pantomime 
of the ballet troupe,” said she. 

“ They all understand it,” said Nolan, “ at least as 
far as I have ever gone. Harrod will tell you how it 
served us once on the Neches.” 

“ It is quickly learned,” said Harrod, not entering 
on the anecdote. “ Indeed, it is simple, as these 
people are. See here,” said he eagerly: “this is 
Watery 

And he dropped his rein, brought both his hands 



74 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

into the shape of a bowl, and lifted them to his mouth, 
without, however, touching it. 

“Now, this is Rain;' he added; and he repeated 
the same sign, lifting his hands a little higher, and 
then suddenly turned his fingers outward, and shook 
them rapidly to represent the falling of water. 

“ Snow is the same thing,” he said, “ only I must 
end with white. This is white; ” and with the fingers 
of his right hand he rubbed on that part of the palm 
of the left which unites the thumb with the fingers. 

“Why is that white?” said Inez, repeating the 
movement. 

“ Look in old Caesar’s hand, and you will see,” said 
Harrod. 

“ Oh, yes ! I see; how bright it all is ! But, Mr. 
Harrod, how do you say go, and come ? where do the 
verbs come in?’^ 

“This is go,” said he; and he stretched his right 
hand out slowly, with the back upward. “ Here is 
come;" and he moved his right finger from right to 
left, with a staccato movement, in which the ladies 
instantly recognized the steps of a man walking. 

Harrod was perhaps hardly such a proficient in 
this pantomime as was Nolan, to whom he often 
turned when Inez asked for some phrase more 
abstract than was the common habit of the “ bread- 
and-butter ” talk of the frontier. But the two gentle¬ 
men together were more than competent to interpret 
to her whatever she asked for; and, when at last she 
began a game of whispering to Nolan what he should 
repeat to Harrod, the precision and fulness of the 
interpretation were as surprising as amusing. 


or, Show your Passports 75 

“ But you have not told us,” said Eunice in the 
midst of this, “ what you said to the Learned Buffalo, 
if that was his name, and what he said to you, in all 
your genuflexions and posturings.” 

“ Oh ! I told you what they said, or that it was 
mostly lies. They said they had lost some horses, 
and had come all this way to look for them. That is 
what an Indian always tells you when he is on some 
enterprise he wants to conceal. He said it was four¬ 
teen days since he had seen any of his white brethren. 
That was a lie. He stopped at Augustine last night, 
and stole that cow-bell that was on the black mule. 
He said his people had been fighting with the 
Comanches, and took thirty-two scalps. That was a 
lie. I heard' all about it from a Caddo chief last 
week. The Comanches whipped them, and they were 
glad to get away with the scalps they wore.” 

“ The language of pantomime seems made to con¬ 
ceal thought,” said Inez. 

“ Oh ! he tells some truth. He says the Spaniards 
have a new company of artillery at San Antonio. 
He says your aunt was out riding on the first day of 
October: you can ask her if that was true, when you 
see her. He says she had with her a calash with two 
wheels, in which sat a black woman who held a baby 
with a blue ribbon. I ought to have told you this 
first of all; but this galimatias of his about the 
Comanches put it out of my head.” 

Inez turned to him almost sadly. 

“Captain Nolan, how can you tell me this non¬ 
sense? Fun is well enough, but you were so serious 
that you really cheated me. I do not like it. I do 


j 6 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

not think you are fair.” And in an instant more the 
girl would be shedding tears. 

“ Indeed, indeed, Miss Inez! ” cried the good fel¬ 
low, “ I know when to fool, and when not. I have 
told you nothing but what the man said to me. 
Blackburn ! ” and he beckoned to one of the mounted 
men who had accompanied Harrod, “ you saw this 
redskin, you know his signs. Miss Perry thinks I 
must have mistaken his news from San Antonio.” 

The man was a rough fellow in his dress, but his 
manner was courteous, with the courtesy of the 
frontier. “ He said, miss, that they left San Antonio 
when the moon had passed its third quarter three 
days. He said that, the day before he came away, a 
new company came up from below, with big guns, — 
guns on carts, he called them, miss. He said that 
same afternoon, the officer in command rode out 
horseback, mum, and a lady with him; and that a 
cart with a kiver over it went behind, with a black 
hoss, miss. He said there was a nigger-woman in the 
kivered cart, an’ she had a white baby, ’n’ the baby 
had *a blue ribbon round her head. I believe that 
was all.” 

The man fell back, as he saw he was no longer 
wanted; and Inez gave her hand very prettily and 
frankly to Nolan, and said, — 

“ I beg your pardon, captain: I was very unjust to 
you. But this seemed impossible.” 

Harrod was greatly pleased with this passage, in its 
quiet testimony to his leader’s accomplishment, though 
it was an accomplishment so far out of the common 
course. Nolan had not referred to him because he 




or, Show your Passports 77 

had heard the interpretation which Inez had chal¬ 
lenged. The talk went on enthusiastically about the 
pantomime language; and the young men vied with 
each other in training the ladies to its manipulations, 
so far as these were possible to people pinioned in 
their saddles. 

“ You can say anything in it,” cried Inez. 

“ I don’t see that,” said Eunice. “ You can say 
anything a savage wants to say.” 

“ You cannot say the Declaration of Independ¬ 
ence,” said Harrod. 

“ Nor the Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” said 
Nolan. 

And so the day wore pleasantly by, till, as they 
came to the ferry where they were to cross the 
Sabine, Nolan confessed he had kept in company to 
the last moment possible, and bade them, “ for a few 
days at most,” he said, farewell. 

He left, as an escort, Harrod and the three scouts 
who had joined with him. Harrod was willing to 
appear as Monsieur Philippe, and the others were to 
meet the Spanish challenge as best they could. It 
might be, Nolan said, that he should have joined 
again before they had to pass inspection once more. 


7 S 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER VII 

THE SAN ANTONIO ROAD 

“ I called to the maid : 

I whispered and said, 

‘ My pretty girl, tell to me, 

The man on the sly 
Who kissed you good-by, — 

Is he Frenchman or Portugee ? ’ ” 

Tom TatnalPs Courtship. 

And so Philip Nolan bade his friends good-by for a 
day or two as they all supposed, but, as it proved, 
for a longer parting. 

The escort of a squad of Spanish cavalry, un¬ 
expected and unsatisfactory as it was, removed the 
immediate or actual necessity for the presence of his 
troop with the little party of Eunice’s retainers. 
None the less did he assure her that he should rejoin 
the party with his larger force, though he did think it 
advisable to keep these out of the sight of the officers 
at the Spanish outposts. The outposts once passed, 
he and his would journey in one part of the province 
as easily as in another. 

To a reader in our time, it is difficult indeed to 
understand why all this machinery of passports should 
be maintained, or why Nolan should have had any 
anxiety about his welcome. Such a reader must learn, 
and must remember, therefore, that, under the old 
colonial system of Spain, the crown held its colonies 
in the state of separation which we speak of some- 




or, Show your Passports 79 

times as Japanese or Paraguayan, though it be now 
abandoned in both Japan and Paraguay. On the 
theory that it was well to maintain colonies for the 
benefit of what was called the metropolis', that is, 
the European state, the people of the Spanish colo¬ 
nies were sternly forbidden to manufacture any article 
which could be supplied from home. With the same 
view, all trade between them and other nations than 
the metropolis was absolutely forbidden ; and, to pre¬ 
vent trade, all communication was forbidden excepting 
at certain specified ports of entry, and with certain 
formal passes. At the time with which we have to 
do, the people of Mexico, and therefore the few 
scattered inhabitants of this region which we now call 
Texas, a part of Mexico, were not permitted to culti¬ 
vate flax, hemp, saffron, the olive, the vine, nor the 
mulberry; and any communication between them 
and the French colony of Louisiana, to the east of 
them, had been strictly forbidden. What the line 
between Mexico and Louisiana was, no man could 
certainly say; but it was certain Natchitoches in 
Louisiana had been a French outpost, while Nacog¬ 
doches in Texas, and San Antonio, were Mexican 
outposts. The territory between the Rio Grande and 
the Red River had always been claimed, with more or 
less tenacity, by both crowns. 

That there should be animosity between Mexico 
and Louisiana while one was French and one was 
Spanish, was natural enough, even if the crowns of 
P'rance and Spain were united in a family alliance. 
It is not so easy to see why this animosity did not 
vanish when Louisiana became a Spanish province, 



8 o Philip Nolan's Friends; 

as it was in this year 1800, in which we are tracing 
along our party of travellers. And it is certainly 
true that a guarded trade was springing up between 
Orleans and Natchitoches on the one hand, and the 
Mexican province on the other; but it is as sure that 
this trade was watched with the utmost suspicion. 

For it involved the danger, as the Mexican author¬ 
ities saw, of a violation of their fundamental principle 
of isolation. They doubtless feared that the silver 
from their northern mines might be a tempting bait 
to the wild Anglo-Americans of the Mississippi, of 
whose prowess they heard tales which would quite 
confirm the boast that their adventurers were half 
horse and half alligator. Trade with the civilized 
Frenchmen, who had a few weak posts on the Missis¬ 
sippi, might be tolerable, now that their colonists 
were under the flag of Spain; but who and what 
were these sons of Anak, on the other side of the 
Mississippi River, who carried a starry flag of their 
own? 

It must be remembered also, that, from the moment 
that the independence of the United States was secure, 
the new settlers of the West had determined that 
they would have a free navigation to the sea, Spain 
or no Spain. They had made many different plans 
for this, none of them very secret. There were those 
who hoped that Louisiana might become French 
again, and were willing to annex Kentucky to Loui¬ 
siana as a French province. There were agents 
down from the Canadian Government, intimating 
that King George could get command of a route 
through to the sea, and would not the people of 



or, Show your Passports 81 

Kentucky and Tennessee like to join him? There 
were simple people who did not care what stood in 
the way, but were ready to march in their might, and 
sweep out of the valley anybody who hindered the 
Kentucky tobacco from finding its way to the markets 
of Europe. None of these plans regarded the King 
of Spain, or his hold of the mouth of the Mississippi 
River, with any reverence or favor. 

Philip Nolan, however, had made his earlier ex¬ 
peditions into Texas with the full assent and approval 
of the Spanish governors of Louisiana. When he 
came back, as has been said, he gave the governor 
some handsome horses from the wild drove which he 
had collected; he received the governor’s thanks, 
and had no difficulty in getting leave to go again. 
And if Philip Nolan’s name had been Sancho Panza 
or Iago del Toboso, and if his birthplace had been in 
Andalusia or Leon, he might perhaps have gone 
back and forth, with horses or without them, for fifty 
years; and this little history would then certainly 
never have been written. 

But his name was not Sancho Panza; it was Philip 
Nolan, and his companions were not Mexican cattle- 
drivers, nor even young hidalgos hanging about town 
in Orleans. There were a few young Kentuckians 
like Harrod and himself; there were Americans from 
a dozen different States; and there were but six 
Spaniards in his whole party. 

He seems to have regarded it as a matter of indif¬ 
ference where this party made its rendezvous. As 
he had the permission of the Spanish governor to 
trade, it certainly should have made no difference. 

6 


82 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

But, in fact, his men made their rendezvous and were 
recruited at Natchez, within the United States terri¬ 
tory, — a town of which the Spaniards had but lately 
given up the possession to the American authorities, 
and that only after much angry talk, and in very bad 
blood. That a party of twenty-one young adven¬ 
turers, under the lead of an American as popular and 
distinguished as Philip Nolan, should cross west into 
Mexico from Natchez, — this was, it may be supposed, 
what excited the jealousy of the military officers in 
command in Northern Mexico. The local jealousy 
between them and the officials of their own king in 
Orleans came in also to help the prejudice with 
which the young American was regarded. 

Nolan rode away with one of the men in buckskin 
who had joined with Harrod, throwing a kiss to Inez 
with that mixture of mock gallantry and real feeling 
which might have been traced in all their intercourse 
with each other. “ Au revoir A cried she to him; 
and he answered, “ Au revoir ,” and was gone. 

“ We shall miss him sadly,” said Eunice, after a 
moment’s silence; “ and I cannot bear to have him 
speak with anxiety of his expedition. He has staked 
too much in it to be disappointed.” 

The travellers followed on their whole route what 
was even then known as the Old San Antonio Road, 
— a road which followed the trail made by the first 
adventurers as early as 1715. It was not and is not, 
by any means, as straight as the track of a bee or a 
carrier-pigeon; and it was after they had had the 
experience of four nights under canvas that they 
approached the Spanish post of Nacogdoches. 


or, Show your Passports 83 

The conversation had again fallen on the probable 
danger or safety of Nolan’s party. 

William Harrod said what was quite true, — that 
Nolan would never be anxious for a moment about 
his own risks; but he was too loyal to these young 
men who had enlisted with him, to lead them into 
danger of which he had not given warning. 

“ For himself he has no fear,” said Inez. 

“ Nor ever had,” was Harrod’s reply. “ Why, Miss 
Inez, I was with him once when a party of Apaches 
ought to have frightened us out of our wits, if we 
had had any. I dare not tell you how many there 
were, but the boys said there were five hundred; 
and, if they had said five thousand, I would not have 
contradicted them; and we poor white-skins, we 
were but fourteen all told. And there was Master 
Nolan as cool as. a winter morning. He was here, he 
was there. I can see him now, asking one of our 
faint-hearted fellows for a plug of tobacco, just that 
he might say something pleasant to the poor fright¬ 
ened dog, and cheer him up. He was in his element 
till it was all over.” 

“And how was it over?” said Inez. “Did you 
have to fight them?” 

“ Yes, and no. We did not get off without firing 
a good many shots before that day was over; and if, 
whenever we come to dance with each other, Miss 
Inez, you ever find that my bridle arm here is the 
least bit stiff, why, it is because of a flint-headed 
arrow one of those rascals put through it that day. 
But Master Phil outgeneralled them in the end.” 

“ How?” 


84 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

“ Oh! it was a simple enough piece of border 
strategy. He brought us down to a shallow place in 
the river, not commanded, you know, by any bluffs 
or high land; and here, with great difficulty, we 
crossed, and got our wild horses across, and all our 
packs, and went into camp, with pickets out, and so 
on. And then at midnight he waked every man of 
us from sleep, took us all back under a sky as dark 
as Egypt, marched us full five miles back on the trail 
where they had been hunting us; and, while my red 
brethren were watching and waiting to cut our throats 
at daybreak, — having crossed the river to lie in wait 
for us as soon as we started, — why, we were ‘ over 
the hills and far away/ 

“ I don’t think the captain likes the Apaches," he 
said grimly, as he finished his little story. 

“ But he can be very kind with the Indians. How 
pleasant it was to see him talking with those — 
Lipans, did you call them?" 

“ Oh, yes! and they know him and they fear him, 
and so far as it is in savage nature they love him. 
Far and wide you will hear them tell these stories of 
the Captain of the Longknives — that is what they call 
him; for they have seen him twenty times oftener 
than they have seen any other officer, Spanish, French, 
or American. Twenty times? They have seen him 
a hundred times as often." 

“For he has done good service to the Spanish 
crown," said Eunice, joining again in the conversa¬ 
tion. “ Though these Spanish gentlemen choose to 
be suspicious, the captain has been their loyal friend. 
The Baron Carondelet trusted him implicitly, and 




or, 


, Show your Passports 85 

Governor Gayoso either feared him or loved him. 
This is certain, — that the captain has done for them 
all that he ever said he would do, and much more.” 

“ You say 1 Spanish and American,’” said Inez, 
laughing. “ And, now that he is the confidential 
agent of General Bonaparte, you must say ‘ French ’ 
as well.” 

“ You remind me,” said William Harrod, “ to ask 
what I am to say if our Spanish friends at the fort 
yonder should wish to parlez-vous a little. The cap¬ 
tain would give them as good as they sent, or better. 
But poor I — when I have said ‘Bon jour!’ ‘Com¬ 
ment vous portez-vous? ’ and ‘ Je n’entends pas,’— I 
have come to the end of my vocabulary. What in 
the world shall I do?” 

“ You must have a toothache,” said Inez, laughing 
as usual. 

“ Oh, no ! ” said Eunice. “The confidential agent 
is a diplomatist; and this for a diplomatist is a very 
large stock in'trade. Let me try. 

“ I will be Captain Alfonso Almonte, Acting Major 
Commandant of His Most Catholic Majesty’s Presidio 
and Fort of Our Lady of the Bleeding Heart on the 
Green River of the West. One of my pickets brings 
in, in honorable captivity, the Senora Eunice Perry 
of Orleans, with the Senorita Inez Perry of the same 
city, and a mixed company of black, white, and gray, 
including three men in buckskin, and M. Philippe, 
the confidential officer of First Consul Bonaparte, 
major-general commanding. 

“ Well, all the others prove to be just what they 
should be, — amiable, charming travellers, and only 


86 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

too loyal in their enthusiasm for His Most Catholic 
Majesty, King Charles the Fourth. After I have 
sent them all to feast from silver and gold, then I 
turn to you, M. Philippe, and I say, — 

“ ‘ When did you leave Paris, monsieur? ’ ” 

Harrod entered into the joke, and replied bravely,— 
“ I say, ‘ Bon jour! ’ ” 

“ Do you? Well, then, I say, ‘ Good-day. I hope 
I see you very well; and may heaven preserve your 
life for many years ! ’ 

“ What do you say now?” 

“ If you would say that in nice homespun English,” 
said Harrod, “ I would say, ‘The same to you. Long 
life and many years to you. Suppose we have some¬ 
thing to drink.’ ” 

“No; you must not say that to a major command¬ 
ant: it is not etiquette. Besides, he does not speak 
in English: he speaks in French. What do you 
say?” 

“ I think the best thing I could say would be, ‘ Je 
n’entends pas.’ See. I would put up my hand, so, 
as if I did not quite catch his Excellency’s meaning; 
and then, very cautiously, and a little as if I would 
deprecate his anger, I would say, ‘Je n’entends 
pas.’.” 

“ But this is mere cowardice. You only postpone 
the irrevocable moment. I should speak a great deal 
louder. I should scream and say, ‘ Bon jour! Dieu 
te b^nisse! Quel heureux hasard vous a conduit 
dans ce pays? ’ I should say this with the last scream 
of my lungs. And you? ” 

“ Why, I think I would then say, ‘ Comment vous 


or, Show your Passports 87 

portez-vous, monsieur? ’ Perhaps it would be better 
to say that at the beginning.” 

“ Well, we shall soon find out,” said Eunice; “ for 
here is the picket, and there is the challenge.” 

Sure enough : as they approached the adobe build¬ 
ings of the fort, a trooper rode out, sufficiently well 
equipped to show that he was in the royal service, 
and asked, “ Who goes there? ” 

Ransom was ready for him, and had learned this 
time that civility was the best policy. The corporal 
of the Spanish escort rode forward, and exchanged 
a word or two with the sentry of the garrison, who 
threw up his lance in salute, and they all filed by. 
A Mexican woman at work making cakes looked up, 
and smiled a pretty welcome. She was “ grinding in 
a mill.” That means that she had two stones, one 
somewhat concave, and the other, so to speak, a 

I gigantic pestle, which filled or fitted into the cavity. 

Into the cavity she dipped in corn, which had been 
? already hulled by the use of lye; and with the stone 
* she ground it into an impalpable paste. Had the 

! ladies stayed long enough to watch this new form of 
household duties, they would have seen her form 
I with her hands and bake the tortilla , with which they 

[ were destined to be better acquainted. As it was, 
they paused but a moment, as the cortlge filed by. 
But they had seen enough to know that they were 
indeed in a foreign country, and that now they were 
to begin to see the customs and hear the language of 
the subjects of their unknown king. 

Orleans, after all, was a pure French city; and till 
now none of this party, excepting Harrod, had any 





88 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

real' experience of Mexican life. Nacogdoches was 
not even a town, though the rudiments of a civil 
settlement were beginning to appear around the 
garrison. The party were halted until their differ¬ 
ent passes could be examined; but the news of the 
arrival of such a cortege had, of course, run like wild¬ 
fire through the post. In a very few minutes Don 
Sebastian Rodriguez, the commandant, had come 
forward in person, bareheaded, to tender his respects 
to the ladies, and to beg them to leave the saddle. 
He introduced Colonel Trevino, the officer of the day, 
who said his wife begged them to honor her by 
accepting her poor hospitality, and trusted that they 
would feel at home in her quarters. 

The uniform of the “officer of the day” was quite 
different from the uniform of any Spanish officers 
whom Inez had ever seen before; for Nacogdoches, 
like the rest of Mexico, was under the rule of the 
Council for the Indies, while Orleans was governed 
directly by the Crown. This gentleman had such a 
coat and waistcoat as the ladies had seen in pictures 
of a generation before. He had on boots which 
resembled a little an Indian’s leggings gartered up, 
so soft and pliable was the leather. His coat and 
vest were blue and red, so that the costume did not 
lack for brilliancy; but the whole aspect, to the man, 
was of efficiency. His costume certainly met the old 
definition of a gentleman’s dress, for there was no 
question but he could “ mount and ride for his life.” 

He sent a negro back to call his wife, and stepped 
forward eagerly to lift Inez from her saddle, while 
Don Sebastian rendered the same service to Eunice. 


or, Show your Passports 89 

The lady sent for came forward shyly, but with 
great courtesy to meet the ladies, and was evidently 
immensely relieved when Eunice with cordiality 
addressed her in Spanish. For the word had been 
through the station, that a party of Americans had 
arrived ; and there was some terror, mixed with much 
curiosity, as one and another of the natives met the 
strangers. When Eunice spoke to the Donna Maria 
Trevino in Spanish rather better than her own, 
the shadow of this terror passed from her face, and, 
indeed, Colonel Trevino’s face took on a different 
expression. 

In far less time than people who call in carriages 
and keep lists of visitors can conceive, the three 
women were perfectly at home with one another. 
In less than five minutes appeared a little collation, 
consisting of chocolate and wine and fruit, and, as 
the Senora Trevino with some pride pointed out, a 
cup of tea. Neither Eunice nor Inez implied, by 
look or tone, that this luxury was not an extreme 
rarity to them. To have said that tea had been 
served by Ransom morning and night at every rest¬ 
ing-place, and at every bivouac, since they left Orleans, 
would have done no good, and certainly would not 
have been kind. 

Meanwhile, in the outer room, which served the pur¬ 
pose of an office for Colonel Trevino, this function¬ 
ary and Harrod were passing through an examination 
none the less severe that it was couched with all the 
forms of courtesy. But with the colonel, as with*his 
lady, the Castilian language worked a spell to which 
even the wax and red tape of the Governor Casa 


go Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

Calvo were not equal. Nor was any curiosity ex¬ 
pressed because Monsieur Philippe did not speak in 
French. And when, after this interview, the colonel 
and Harrod joined the ladies, as they did, Ransom 
having respectfully withdrawn under the pretext of 
seeing personally to the horses of the party, Inez 
was greatly amused to see the diplomatic agent, 
Monsieur Philippe, and the colonel commanding, Don 
Francesco Trevino, talking Spanish together with the 
ease and regard of old companions in arms. 

Harrod said afterward that a common danger made 
even rabbits and wolves to be friends. “ And my 
friend the colonel was so much afraid of this redoubt¬ 
able filibuster ‘ Nolano,’ with his hundreds of giant 
‘ Kentuckians,’ that when he found a meek and humble 
Frenchman like me, with never a smack of English 
on my tongue, he was eager to kiss and be friends.” 

The conversation, indeed, had not been very unlike 
that which they had but just now rehearsed in jest. 
Ransom, with perfect civility this time, had explained 
that these were Spanish ladies with their servants, 
travelling to San Antonio, on a visit to their relations. 
The name of Barelo, his brother officer, was enough 
to command the respect of Colonel Trdvino, who was 
only too voluble in expressing the hope that his 
pickets and sentries had been civil. 

“In truth,” he said, “we have been cautious, per¬ 
haps too cautious. But no, a servant of the king is 
never too cautious; a soldier is never too cautious. 
But we have received now one, two, three alarms, 
that the Americans are to attack us. We do not 
know if there is peace, we do not know if there is 




or, Show your Passports 91 

war; bj.it we do not love republics, we soldiers of the 
king. And if my men had taken you for the party 
of Nolano,— well, well — it is well — that there were 
ladies was itself your protection. The filibusters do 
not bring with them ladies.” 1 

Harrod was troubled to find that Nolan’s reputa¬ 
tion on the frontier was so bad, and felt at once that 
his chief had not rated at the full the perils of his 
position, when he ascribed them merely to a differ¬ 
ence between Orleans Spaniards and Spaniards of 
Texas. Of course the young man let no sign escape 
him which should show that he was interested in 
Nolan or his filibusters. He was only hoping that 
Blackburn and the other men outside might be as 
prudent. In a moment more the colonel said, with 
some embarrassment, — 

“ I beg your pardon that I addressed you in the 
Castilian. I see from Captain Morales’s pass that you 
are a French gentleman. We forget that our friends 
in Orleans yonder do not all use our language.” 

Harrod laughed good-naturedly, and, speaking in 
the Castilian as before, said,— 

“ It is indeed a pleasure to me to speak in the 
Spanish when I am permitted. As the language is 
more convenient to the ladies, let 11s retain it, if you 
1 please.” 

1 This word “filibusters,” originally the English word “free¬ 
booters,” and as such familiarly used on the coast of Mexico and the 
I Spanish main, had degenerated on Spanish tongues into the word 
“ filibuster.” It was familiarly used for an invader who came for 
plunder, whether he crossed the frontier by land or by sea. It has 
passed back into our language without regaining its original spelling 
and pronunciation. 




g2 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

The colonel had been about to say that he would 
call a lieutenant upon his staff, who spoke the French 
more freely than he did; but the readiness of the 
French gentleman saved him from this necessity; 
and, with relief only next to that which he had shown 
when he found he was not talking to the dreaded 
Nolan, he entered into free conversation in his own 
tongue. In this language Harrod had for many 
years been quite at home. 

The colonel finished his examination of the elab¬ 
orate pass furnished by Casa Calvo, intimated that 
he would prepare a more formal document than that 
given in the saddle by Captain Morales, and then, 
having made himself sure that the little collation was 
prepared, proposed that they should join the ladies. 

The ladies felt, as Harrod had done, that a single 
word even of English might prejudice the cordiality 
of their reception. Even old Ransom had made this 
out, by that divine instinct or tact which was an 
essential part of his make-up; and when he came 
for orders, so called, from the ladies, even if he 
whispered to them and they to him, it was always 
in the Spanish language. Indeed, Inez said after¬ 
ward, that, when he chose to swear at the muleteers, 
it was in oaths of the purest Castilian. 

As he left the room for the first time, Harrod 
called him back, and whispered to him also. This was 
to bid him tell Blackburn, and the others of his im¬ 
mediate command, that, as they loved Captain Nolan, 
they were not to speak in English, either to Harrod 
or to one another, while they were in Nacogdoches, 
They were to remember that they were all French 


or, Show your Passports 93 

hunters, and, if they did not speak French, they 
must speak Choctaw,—an alternative which all three 
accepted. 

“ Let me present to you, my dear wife, Monsieur 
Philippe, the gentleman who accompanies these 
ladies, — a French gentleman, my dear.” 

Harrod bowed with all the elegance of Paris and 
Kentucky united. 

“ I have been explaining, ladies, to your friends 
the causes of these preparations of war, — the over¬ 
sight of passports and the challenge of travellers, so 
unusual, and so foreign to hospitality in the time of 
peace; if, indeed, this be peace. May God bless us! 
Only he knows and the Blessed Virgin.” 

“Is it, then, a time of war?” asked Eunice,— 
“and with whom?” 

“The good God knows, senora: if only I were 
equally fortunate! Whether our gracious master, 
the good King Charles IV., is not at this moment in 
war with this great General Bonaparte,” — and he 
bowed, with a droll and sad effort at civility, toward 
“Monsieur Philippe,” as if that gentleman were him¬ 
self the young Corsican adventurer, “ — or whether 
these wild republicans of the American States have 
not made war upon us, the good God—may he bless 
us all! — and the Holy Mother know; but I do not.” 

“ Surely I can relieve your anxiety, colonel,” said 
| Eunice, in her most confiding manner. “We are not 
yet a fortnight from Orleans, and we had then news 
only nine weeks from Europe. So far from war, the 
First Consul was cementing peace with our august 
king. I shall have pleasure in showing you a French 


94 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

gazette which makes us certain of that happy 
intelligence. Then, from our neighbors of the 
American States there were no news but such as 
were most peaceful. ,, 

“ But your ladyship does not understand,” said 
Colonel Trevino, hoping that she might not see how 
much he was relieved by the intelligence, — “ your 
ladyship does not, cannot, understand the anxieties 
of a command like ours. It is not the published war, 
it is not the campaigns which can be told in gazettes, 
and proclaimed by heralds, which we soldiers dread.” 
Again with an approving glance at Monsieur Philippe, 
as if he were Bonaparte in person. “ It is the secret 
plots, the war in disguise. This Nolano will not send 
word in advance that he is coming.” 

Inez started, in spite of herself, as she heard the 
name ; and then she could have punished herself by 
whatever torture for her lack of self-control. She 
need not have been distressed. The Colonel Trevino 
did not suspect a girl of seventeen of caring any 
more for what he said, than the cat who was purring 
in the Donna Trevino’s arms. 

“ This Nolano will not send word in advance that 
he is coming. He will swoop down on us with his 
giants, as a troop of buffalo swoops down upon a 
drinking-pond in yonder prairie. And he must re¬ 
turn,— yes, may the Holy Lady grant it! God be 
blessed ! —he must return as a flock of antelopes return 
when they have caught a glimpse of the hunters.” 

The colonel was well pleased with this bit of 
rhetoric. Eunice, meanwhile, had not changed glance 
nor color. 


or, Show your Passports 

“Who is this Nolano of whom you speak? Is he 
an officer of General Bonaparte?” 

“ Grace of God! No, madame! He is one of 
these Americans of the North, who propose to march 
from their cold, wintry recesses to capture the city of 
Mexico; to take the silver-mines of our king, and 
divide them for their spoil. Our advices, madam, 
are not so distinct as I could wish; but we know 
enough to be sure that this man has recruited an 
army in the east, and, if the way opens, will attack us.” 

“ Impossible,” said Eunice bravely, “ that he should 
have recruited an army, and the Marquis of Casa 
Calvo know nothing of it! Impossible that the mar¬ 
quis should permit me and this lady to travel in a 
country so soon to be the scene of war! ” 

“ A thousand pardons, senora,” persisted the other. 
“ We speak under the rose here. Let it be con¬ 
fessed that the Marquis of Casa Calvo is not so young 
as he was forty years ago, nor so sharp-sighted. Our 
sovereign places him, perhaps, at Orleans; let us 
say — yes, may the Holy Mother preserve us ! — be¬ 
cause that is not the place of action and of arms. 
For us, — why, we have seen Philippo Nolano, and 
that within two years.” 

Poor Inez ! She did not dare to glance at Harrod; 
but she longed to strike an attitude rivalling the colo¬ 
nel’s and to say,— 

“ And we have seen Philippo Nolano, and that 
within two days.” 

But the position, though it had its ludicrous side, 
was of course sufficiently critical to keep them all 
seriously watchful of word and glance alike. 



g 6 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

“ Indeed ! ” said Eunice seriously, “ how was this? 
and what manner of man is he? What do you say 
his name is?” 

“His name is Nolano, my lady; his baptismal 
name, if these heretics have any baptism, is Philippo : 
may the Saint Philippo pardon me, and preserve us! 
Do we know him ? Why, he made his home in this 
very presidio of Nacogdoches, and that not two years 
ago. My lady, he has sat in that chair, he has drunk 
from this cup. To think that such treason should 
lurk in these walls, and study out in advance our 
defences! ” 

At this point the little lady of the group took 
courage. 

“ My dear husband,” said the Senora Trevino, “let 
us admit that we were very glad to see him. — In¬ 
deed, ladies, he is a most agreeable person, though 
he be an American of the North, and a filibuster. 
He was here for some time; and he knew the lan¬ 
guage of the Americans so well, that in all business 
he served my husband and the other officers here as 
an interpreter. There were some Americans arrested 
for illicit trade, — silver, you know,” and she dropped 
her voice, — “ two men, with a hard name; but I 
learned it, so often did I hear it. There was a pro¬ 
cess about these men: Eastridge was their name. 
Oh ! it lasted for months; and often was your name¬ 
sake Don Philippo in the chair you sat in, Monsieur 
Philippo; he was discussing their business with my 
husband —” 

“ And playing chess with my wife,” said the colonel, 
interrupting her. “Ah. he was a very cunning sol- 


or, Show your Passports 97 

dier, was your Don! There is no secret of our de¬ 
fences but is known to him; and now he comes with 
an army.” 

“ Surely,” said Eunice as bravely as before, “you 
do not speak of the Captain Nolan who was so near 
a friend of the Baron Carondelet. Why, he was pre¬ 
sented to me by the Baron himself at a ball.” 

Colonel Trevino confessed that Nolan brought him 
letters at one time from the Baron. 

“ And my brother has dined with him at General 
Gayoso’s palace. Oh ! it is impossible that this per¬ 
son can lead an American army.” 

“Ladies,” said the colonel, clasping his hands, “a 
soldier must believe nothing, and he must believe 
everything also. May all the saints preserve us! ” 

And Eunice felt that she had pressed the defence 
of her friend as far as was safe, or to his advantage. 


CHAPTER VIII 

THE DRESSED DAY 

“A visit should be of three days’ length: i. The Rest 
Day. 2. The Dressed Day. 3. The Pressed Day.” — Miss 
Ferrier. 

The respect due to a reception so courteous as that 
with which the Colonels Trevino and Rodriguez wel¬ 
comed the party, compelled a stay in Nacogdoches 
over one full day. In truth, Philip Nolan had advised 
a stay so long, and had told the ladies that he had a 
thousand ways of informing himself at what moment 

7 




9g Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

they should leave the fort to proceed westward. The 
morning of the day after the arrival of the ladies was 
spent in a prolonged breakfast, in which the senora 
did her best to show her guests that the resources of 
a military post were not contemptible. And indeed 
she succeeded When she had made it certain that 
they were not too much fatigued by their five days 
ride from the river, she took order to assemble at 
supper all the officers of the command and their 
wives; and the preparations for this little fete filled 
the colonel’s quarters with noisy bustle, quite unusual, 
through the morning. 

In the midst of this domestic turmoil, — not so dif¬ 
ferent, after all, from what Eunice and Inez had seen 
on the plantation, when Silas Perry had brought up 
an unexpected company of guests, — a new turmoil 
broke out in the square, and called most of the occu¬ 
pants of the house out upon the arcade which fronted 
it. The Lady Trevino was not too dignified to join 
the groups of curious inquirers; and she did not return 
at once to her guests. 

Ransom did come in, under the pretence of asking 
if they needed anything, but really because there 
was news to tell. He satisfied himself that in this 
dark inner room there were no eavesdroppers, and 
that those heavy stone walls had no ears; and then 
he indulged himself, though in a low tone, in the 
forbidden luxury of the vernacular. 

“Pray what is it, Ransom?” asked Inez, speaking 
always in Spanish. 

“ All nonsense,” said the old man, — “ all non¬ 
sense : told ’em so myself, but they would not hear 


or. Show your Passports gg 

to me. Spanishers .and niggers all on ’em, nothin’ 
but Greasers: don’t know nothin’, told ’em so — all 
nonsense.” 

Then after a pause: — 

“ White gal ’z old as you be, Een: ” this was his 
shorthand way of saying “ Miss Inez,” when he 
was off guard. 

“ White gal dressed jest like them Injen women ye 
see down on the levy. They catched her up here 
among the Injens, and brought her away. She 
can’t speak nothin’ but Injen, and they don’t know 
what she says. They brought her down from up 
there among the Injens where they catched her. 
She’s dressed jest like them Injen women ye see 
on the levy; but she’s a white gal — old as you 
be, Een.” 

Inez knew by long experience that when one 
of Ransom’s speeches had thus balanced itself by 
repetition backward to the beginning, — as a musical 
air returns to the keynote, — she might put in a 
question without disturbing him. 

“Who found her, Ransom? Who brought her 
in ? ” 

“ Squad o’ them soldiers; call ’em soldiers, ain’t 
soldiers, none on ’em: ain’t one on ’em can stand the 
Choctaw Injens two minutes. Was ten on ’em goin’ 
along, and had a priest with ’em, — ’n they met a lot 
o’ Injens half-starved, they said. Men was clean 
lost, — had n’t got no arrows, and could n’t git 
no game. Did n’t b’long here: got down here ’n 
got lost; didn’t know nothin’. Injens had this 
white gal, — white as you be, Een, — ’n the priest 


loo Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

said he would n’t gin ’em nothin’ ef they would n’t 
let him have the white gal. They did n’t want to, 
but he made ’em, he did; said they should not 
have nothin’ ef they would n’t let him have the 
white gal. White as you be she is, Miss Eunice.” 

Inez was all excited by this time, and begged 
her aunt to join the party in the arcade, — which 
they did. 

True enough, just under the gallery, was this tall 
wild girl, of singularly clear brunette complexion, 
but of features utterly distinct from those of an 
Indian squaw. Eunice and Inez, indeed, both felt 
that the girl was not of Spanish, but of Anglo- 
Saxon or Scotch-Irish blood, though, in the un¬ 
popularity of their own lineage in Nacogdoches 
neither of them thought it best to say so. Three 
or four of the Mexican women of the post were 
around the girl, some of them examining her sav¬ 
age ornaments, some of them plying her with tor¬ 
tillas and fruit, and even milk, under the impression 
that she must be hungry. The girl herself looked 
round, not without curiosity, and in a dozen pretty 
ways showed that she was not of the same phleg¬ 
matic habit as her recent possessors. 

In a few moments the Senora Trevino returned, 
having given some orders for the poor girl’s comfort, 
the results of which immediately appeared. 

But when she called the girl to her most kindly, 
and when she came under the arcade as she was 
beckoned, the ladies could make no progress in 
communicating with her. She seemed to have no 
knowledge of Spanish, nor yet of French. If she 


or. Show your Passports ioi 

had been taken prisoner from either a Spanish or 
French settlement, it was when she was so young 
that she had forgotten their language. 

Inez tried her with “madre” and “padre;” the 
Senora Trevino pointed reverently to a crucifix, 
and a Madonna with folded hands. But the girl 
showed no other curiosity than for the other articles of 
taste or luxury —if such simple adornments can be 
called such. 

“ Eunice,” cried Inez, “ I am sure she under¬ 
stood ‘mamma.’ Say ( ma’ to her alone.” 

Meanwhile Madame Trevino called one and another 
woman and servant who had some smattering of In¬ 
dian dialects; but the girl would smile good-na¬ 
turedly, and could make nothing of what they said. 
But this suggested to Eunice that she might beckon 
to Blackburn the hunter, who was lounging in the 
group in front; and in a whisper she bade him 
address the girl in the Choctaw dialect. 

This language was wholly distinct from any of the 
dialects of the west of the Mississippi—as these, in¬ 
deed, changed completely, even between tribes whose 
hunting-grounds were almost the same. 

Blackburn did as he was bidden, but without the 
least success; but in a moment he fell back on the 
gift of silence, and began in the wonderful panto¬ 
mime, which the ladies had already seen so success¬ 
ful between Nolan and the Lipan chief. 

The girl smiled most intelligently, nodded assent, 
and in the most vivid, rapid, and active gesture en¬ 
tered on a long narration, if it may be called so, of 
her life with the Indians, Blackburn sometimes had 


loz Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

to bid her be more slow, and repeat herself. But 
it was clear enough that they were both on what he 
would have called the right trail, and he was coming 
to a full history of her adventures. 

But a new difficulty arose when Blackburn was to 
interpret what he had learned. He made a clumsy 
effort in a few words of bread-and-butter Spanish, 
such as all Western men picked up in the groceries 
and taverns at Natchez. But this language was very 
incompetent for what he had to tell. Still the good 
fellow knew that he must not speak English in the 
presence of these Greasers; and he bravely strug¬ 
gled on in a Spanish which was as unintelligible as 
his Choctaw. 

In the midst of this confusion Ransom came to the 
front, and addressed him boldly, — 

“ Est-ce-que vous ne parlez Francais bien, mon 
camarade? Then speak hog English, but I ’ll tell 
’em it’s Dutch. Say parlez-vous at the beginning, 
and oui, monsieur , at the end.” 

Then he turned to the Senora Trevino, and bowed 
with a smile, and told her that the man was a poor 
ignorant dog from Flanders, who had been in the 
woods as a hunter ever since he came abroad as a 
boy; that he spoke very little French, and that very 
badly; but that he, Ransom, had seen him so much 
that he could understand him. 

Then he turned to Blackburn: — 

“ N’oubliez pas, mon ami, — don’t forget a word I 
tell you. Pepper it well, and don’t git us hanged for 
nothin’. Ensuite — tout ensemble — oui, monsieur.” 

“ Oui, monsieur, vraiment,” said Blackburn bravely, 


or. Show your Passports 103 

"The gal don’t remember when she did not live with 
the redskins, sacrement! parbleu ! mon Dieu ! But 
she does not remember her own mother, who died 
ten years ago. Parlez-vous Francais, Saint Denis! 
Since then she has lived as they all live. Comment, 
monsieur. She says she wants to go to the East, 
that her mother bade her go there. Morbleu ! sacre¬ 
ment ! oui, monsieur. She says the redskins was n’t 
kind to her, and was n’t hard on her, but did n’t give 
her enough to eat, and made her walk when her feet 
was sore. Mere de Dieu, sacrement! Saint Denis — 
bon jour! ” 

It was clear enough that poor Blackburn’s French 
had been mostly picked up among the voyagers on 
the river, and alas! from their profane, rather than 
their ethical or aesthetic moments. It may be 
doubted whether to the Senora Trevino the poor 
smattering would not have betrayed rather than 
helped the poor fellow, but that her sympathies were 
so wholly engrossed by the condition of the captive 
that she cared little by what means her story was 
interpreted. 

In a moment more, Ransom had explained it in 
voluble Spanish. 

“ Ask him for her name, Ransom; ask if she knew 
her mother’s name; ask him how old she is,” cried 
Inez eagerly. 

“ She says the Indians call her the White Hawk, 
but that her mother called her Mary, and bade her 
never forget,” said the old man, really wiping his 
eyes. “ She says she is sixteen summers old.” 

Inez seized the girl’s hand, and said “ Marie,” of 


104 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

which she made nothing; but when the girl said 
squarely “Mary,” “Mary,” and then said “ Ma ” — 
“Ma”— “ Ma,” the poor captive’s face flushed for 
the first time; and she seized both Inez’s hands, 
repeated all these syllables after her, and broke into 
a flood of tears. 

“ Ma-ry,” said Eunice slowly to the Senora Tre¬ 
vino : “ it is the way they pronounce Marie in the 
eastern provinces.” 

In a moment more appeared the portly and cheer¬ 
ful Father Andres, who had by good fortune accom¬ 
panied the foraging party which had brought in 
this waif from the forest. To his presence with the 
soldiers, indeed, it is probable that she owed her 
redemption. 

Ransom’s story was substantially correct. This 
was a little band of Apaches, who had by an accident 
been cut off from the principal company of their 
tribe, and by a series of misfortunes had lost their 
horses and most of their weapons. They were loath 
to throw themselves on Spanish hospitality, and well 
they might be. Still, when the troopers had struck 
their trail and overtaken them, the savages were in 
great destitution and well-nigh starving. They were 
out of their own region, were trying to return to it on 
foot, and were living as they might on such rabbits 
as they could snare, and such wild fruits as they 
could find. Father Andres, with a broader humanity, 
had agreed to give a broken-down mule and a quar¬ 
ter of venison as a ransom for the girl; and both 
parties had been well satisfied with the exchange. 

For the girl herself, —she was tall, graceful in 


or, Show your Passports 105 

movement, eminently handsome, with features of 
perfect regularity, eyes large and black, and with her 
head fairly burdened with the luxuriant masses of 
hair, which were gathered up with some savage or¬ 
nament, but insisted upon curling in a most un-Indian- 
like way. There was a singular unconsciousness in 
her demeanor, like that of an animal. Inez said she 
never knew that you were looking at her. Once and 
again, in this little first interview, she started to her 
feet, and stood erect and animated, with an eagerness 
which the Spanish women around her, or their Indian 
servants, never showed, and could not understand. 
Perhaps she never seemed so attractive as in these 
animated pantomimes in which she answered their 
questions, or explained the detail of her past 
history. 

Soon after the arrival of Father Andres, Harrod 
returned from riding with the officers. He explained 
to Donna Isabella that he had acquired some knowl¬ 
edge of the Indian pantomime in his hunting expedi¬ 
tions. By striking out one superfluous interpreter 
from the chain, he gave simplicity and animation to 
the stranger’s narrative. 

She remembered perfectly well many things that 
her mother had told her, though she showed only 
the slightest knowledge of her mother’s language. 
But, on this point, Harrod and the ladies from 
Orleans were determined to try her more fully when 
they were alone. The village, whatever it was, of her 
birthplace, had been fortified against savages; but a 
powerful tribe had attacked it, and, after long fighting, 
the whites had surrendered. But what was surrem 


106 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

der to such a horde? So soon as they had laid down 
their weapons, the Indians had slaughtered every man, 
and every boy large enough to carry arms. Next 
they had killed for convenience’ sake every child not 
big enough to travel with them in their rapid retreat. 
The women they had kept, and if any woman chose 
to keep her baby the whim was indulged. Such a 
baby was this “ Ma-ry,” — the White Hawk just now 
rescued. Her mother had clung to her in every trial. 
Long, long before the White Hawk could remember 
anything, she and her mother had been sold to some 
other tribe, which took them far from other captives 
of their own race. With this tribe — who were 
Apaches of Western Texas — she had lived ever 
since she could remember. She had always heard of 
whites. She had always known she was one of them. 
But she had never seen a white man till yesterday. 

“ And, now you are with us, you will stay with us,” 
said Donna Isabella eagerly. 

The girl did not so much as notice her appeal; for 
she happened to be looking on one of the thousand 
marvels around her, so that she did not catch the 
eagerness of the Spanish iady’s eye, and she under¬ 
stood not a syllable of her language. Harrod touched 
her gently, and repeated the appeal to her in a pan¬ 
tomime which the others could partly follow. 

Then the White Hawk smiled, — oh! so prettily, 
— and replied in a pantomime which they could not 
follow; but she placed her hand in Donna Isabella’s, 
in Eunice’s, and in Inez’s, in rapid succession, just 
pausing long enough before each to give the assur¬ 
ance of loyalty. 


or, Show your Passports 107 

“ She says that she promised her mother every 
night, before she slept, that she would go to her own 
people,—the whites. Whenever she can go to the 
rising sun to find them, she must go. But she says 
she is sure you three will be true to her, and that she 
will be true to you. She says she must find her 
mother’s brothers and sisters, and she says you must 
be her guides.” 

Inez’s eyes were brimming with tears. 

“ Can we find them, Monsieur Philippe? How can 
we find them? Where was this massacre, and when? ” 

The Spanish officers shrugged their shoulders at 
this, and said that, alas ! there was only too much of 
such cruelty all along the frontier. The story, Harrod 
said, was like that of the massacre at Fort Loudon, 
but that was too long ago. The truth was, that for 
seventy years, from the time when the Indians of 
Natchez sacrificed the PTench garrison there, down 
to that moment, such carnage had been everywhere. 
Harrod told the ladies afterward that in only seven 
years, about the time of which the White Hawk 
spoke, fifteen hundred of the people of Kentucky 
had been killed or taken prisoners, and as many 
more on the Ohio River above Kentucky. Which 
village of a hundred, therefore, was White Hawk’s 
village, of which mother of a thousand was hers, it 
would be hard to tell. 

But Eunice thought that in that eye and face she 
saw the distinct sign of that Scotch-Irish race which 
carries with it, wherever it emigrates, such matchless 
beauty of color, whether for women or for men. But 
of this to their Spanish friends she said nothing. 


108 Philip Nolans Friends; 

So unusual a ripple in the stagnant life of the gar¬ 
rison threw back the memory of the arrival of the 
ladies from Orleans quite in the distance. Still, when 
the evening came, and the Donna Isabella s guests 
gathered, it proved that the several ladies of the little 
“society” had not been unmindful of the duties they 
owed to fashion. Most of them were attired in the 
latest styles of Mexico and Madrid which were known 
to them. Others relied boldly on the advices they 
had received from their correspondents, and wore 
what they supposed the latest fashion of Europe out¬ 
side of Spain. All came, eager with curiosity to see 
what were the latest dates from Orleans and from 
Paris. With some difficulty, and in the face of many 
protests from Ransom, Eunice and Inez were able 
to indulge them. It was necessary to open some 
packs which had been put up for San Antonio, and 
San Antonio only. 

Ransom said this was impossible. Eunice said it 
must be done. Ransom said he would not do it. 
Eunice said that then she should have to do it her¬ 
self. Ransom then knew that he had played his last 
card, went and opened the packs in question, brought 
them to the ladies, and declared that it was the easi¬ 
est thing in life to do so, and that, in fact, they ought 
to be opened, because they needed the air. For such 
was Ransom’s way when he was met face to face. 

We ought to tell our fair readers how these two 
ladies were dressed on that October evening. Not so 
different in the effect at a distance from the costumes 
of to-day; but the waists of their frocks were very 
close under their arms, as if they were the babies of 


or, Show your Passports 109 

1876 at the baptismal font. For the rest, the skirts 
were scant, as Inez’s diary tells me, and the trimming 
was their glory. 

Would you like to see Madame Fantine’s account 
of the dress which Inez wore that evening? It is, 
“ Coiffure a l’hirondelle. Robe a soie bleue a demi 
I traine; la jupe garnie des paillettes.” Now, pail¬ 
lettes were little round steel spangles. 

There! Is not that the loyal and frank way for 
the novelist of the nineteenth century when he has 
his heroine’s costume to describe? 

But Madame Fantine could not have described the 
White Hawk’s dress, — “Ma-ry’s;” and, after all, 
she was the belle of the evening. The Donna Isa¬ 
bella and Inez, principally Inez, had devoted them- 
selves to her toilet through the afternoon. To dress 
her as a Christian woman had been Donna Isabella’s 
first idea; but, to say truth, Donna Isabella’s idea of 
Christianity was not unlike that of the missionaries 
in Africa, who 5 e first great triumph was the persuad¬ 
ing the natives to bury their dead in coffins. If the 
Donna Isabella could have seen the White Hawk in 
a mantilla and long silk wrapper, she would have 
been as well satisfied as Father Andres if he could 
place baptismal waters on her forehead. To such 
costume White Hawk herself objected. Could she 
have spoken Hebrew, she would have said, with 
Jesse’s son, “ I have not proved them.” And here 
our pretty Inez proved her loyal friend. How 
charming it was to see these lovely girls together! 
No: White Hawk had come to them in savage cos¬ 
tume, and so it was best that she should come to the 




X IO 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

party. Only these feathers must be crisp and new; 
and the presidio was quite competent to furnish 
crisp, new crane’s feathers. This doeskin tunic, — 
yes, it did have a bad smell, even Inez had to con¬ 
fess that; but the quartermaster produced a lovely 
new doeskin, at the sight of which those black eyes 
of White Hawk’s flashed fire; and what with Inez’s 
needle, and Eunice’s, and the Mexican maid of 
Donna Isabella, and White Hawk’s own nimble 
fingers, every pretty fringe, every feather, with every 
bead and every shell, from the old wilderness-worn 
dress, were transferred in an hour to the new robe. 
As for hair, as Inez said, there was not a majors 
wife, nor a captain’s, at the party, but envied White 
Hawk her magnificent coiffure. 

For slippers — alias moccasins — they were fain 
to go to the storehouse of the presidio again, and 
select one of the smallest pair they found there made 
ready for women’s wear. They gave these to White 
Hawk, who laughed merrily. Before the “ party ” be¬ 
gan, they were embroidered with the brightest colors, 
discovered only White Hawk knew where or how. 

Thus apparelled, White Hawk certainly drew all 
eyes. Inez confessed that she paled her ineffectual 
fires. Her ivory fan, fresh from Paris, did not win 
the homage, she said, which White Hawk won by 
her crane’s feathers. 

“ And what could you expect,” said the enthusi¬ 
astic girl, “when she has those wonderful cheeks, 
those blazing eyes, and that heavenly smile? Eunice, 
if you do not take her to Antonio with us, why, 
Eunice, I shall die! ” 


111 


or, Show your Passports 

The garrison, at its best, furnished twelve ladies — 
confessed as ladies — when there was any such occa¬ 
sion for festivity as this evening. Of gentlemen, as 
at all military posts, there was no lack. The frontier 
garrison towns of Mexico presented at that time a 
series of curious contrasts. Gentlemen of the best 
training of Europe, who had perhaps brought with 
them ladies of the highest culture, — as Governor 
Herrara had at this very time,—were stationed for 
years, in the discharge of the poor details of frontier 
duty, in the midst of the simplest and most ignorant 
people in Christendom. In the same garrison would 
be young Mexican gentlemen in training for the same 
service, not deficient in the external marks of a gen¬ 
tleman, but without any other culture than training 
in the details of tactics. Between the wives was a 
broader contrast, perhaps, than between the hus¬ 
bands. Very few Mexican ladies of the Spanish 
blood, “ Creoles,” if we may take the expression of 
the day, were educated for any conversation with 
intelligent men, or expected to bear a share in it. 
But such a lady as Madame Herrara, with whom the 
persevering reader of these pages will meet, or the 
Senora Maria Caberairi, or the Senora Marguerite 
Valois, accustomed to the usages of Europe, lived as 
rational beings; that is, they received visits, and 
, discharged the duties of an elegant hospitality. Such 
a protest against the Oriental seclusion, which per- 
i haps the Moors introduced into Spanish life, whether 
in Old Spain or in New Spain, met with no favor from 
the handsome, indolent, and passive ladies who made 
up the majority of garrison society. And the line was 



11 2 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

marked with perfect distinctness, on this occasion, 
between four on the one side and eight on the other, 
of the ladies who attended at Donna Isabella’s ball. 

This contrast added greatly to the lively Inez’s en¬ 
joyment of the evening. She had no lack of good 
partners, only too eager to take her out to the 
minuet. The lively girl showed that she, at least, 
had no objection to talking to young officers, and 
that she had enough to say to them. 

" Do not disgrace your duenna,” said Eunice, 
laughing, as Inez left her on one of these campaigns 
of conquest. And Inez said,— 

“ Dearest duenna, if I could only use a fan as well 
as you do ! ” 

Harrod said to Eunice that he should find his 
occupation gone, now that there was a little army of 
Dons and hidalgos only too eager to take charge of 
the ladies of his convoy. Indeed, in brilliancy of 
costume, the gentlemen of the party quite held their 
own in comparison with even the French and Span¬ 
ish toilets of the ladies. The dragoons wore a short 
blue coat, with red cape and cuffs, with small-clothes 
of blue velvet always open at the knee. Every gen¬ 
tleman brought with him a tall dress hat, such as 
the modern reader associates with banditti on the 
stage. It was etiquette to bring this even into the 
ballroom, because the ribbon of gay colors with 
which it was bound was supposed to be a lady’s 
gift and a mark of gallantry. Many of the men were 
tall and handsome, and you would have said that 
dancing and cards were the only business of their lives 
Although Inez had spent her whole life in wha' 


or, Show your Passports 11 3 

was called a Spanish colony, in a town which thought 
much of itself, while Nacogdoches was but a garrison 
post, she had never seen, till now, any of the peculiar 
forms of Spanish society. Orleans held its head very 
high in the social way, but it was as a French city. 
The new governors and their courts could make no 
head against the proud Gallicism of the people they 
found there; and French travellers said with pride 
that Spaniards were “ Francised ,” but Frenchmen 
were not “ Espanoled” in Orleans. 

The minuet was at that moment the property of 
the world. The fandango and the bolero were dances 
Inez had never seen before; nor would she have 
shed tears if she had been told she should never see 
them again. The White Hawk, who joined even 
merrily in the gayeties of the evening, seemed hurt 
and annoyed at the intimacies of the fandango, and 
showed that she was glad when it was over. None 
of the strangers, indeed, could take part in it; and 
they observed that a part of the ladies among their 
hosts would not take part in it. Naturally enough, 
the talk turned on national dances, in a circle of such 
varied nationalities. The White Hawk frankly and 
simply performed an Apache pas seid for the sur¬ 
prise and amusement of her hosts, so soon as she 
found they would take pleasure from it. And then, 
after a little conference with Donna Maria and her 
husband, and a word with Colonel Rodriguez, the 
commander of the garrison, one of the band-men was 
sent out to bring in a party of dancers from the 
vulgar crowd without, who would show a pure Mex¬ 
ican dance to the visitors. 

8 


114 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

This was the dance of the Matachines, which dates 
back even to the court of Montezuma. A boy, gayly 
dressed, rushed in with his bride: these were Monte¬ 
zuma and Malinche. The girl’s rattle took the place 
of the castanets of the fandango. In an instant more 
the other dancers, armed also with rattles, followed 
in two parallel rows, soon breaking into four; and a 
large man with a hideous mask, — the devil of the 
scene,—-whip in hand, ruled the pageant. Nobody 
but Montezuma and Malinche escaped his blows. 

At times the emperor and his bride sat in chairs 
which were placed for their thrones, and received 
from the other dancers the most humble protesta¬ 
tions. 

Friar Andres said that the whole was typical of 
astronomical truths. Perhaps it was. I remember 
Margaret Fuller once told me, who write these words, 
what the quadrille called “ pantalon ” typified. If I 
only remembered! That is the figure where the 
gentleman leaves his partner for a while in captivity 
on the other side. 

Meanwhile all the men were not occupied in min¬ 
uets, in fandangos, in boleros, or in fanning ladies. 
Parties of officers, not inconsiderable, sat at cards in 
the card-rooms; and, if one could judge from their 
cries now and then, the play was exciting and high. 

In such amusements the “ dressed day ” came to 
a close, and it stole an hour even from the day of 
departure. 


or, Show your Passports 


“5 


CHAPTER IX 

TALKING AND WALKING 

, “ Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest I ’ll ven¬ 

ture.” — Milton. 

It was decided in solemn assembly, the next morning, 
that the White Hawk should join the party of travel¬ 
lers for San Antonio. Doha Isabella had seen too 
much of garrison life to wish to keep the girl longer 
than was necessary at a post like Nacogdoches. In¬ 
deed, if she ever were to seek her birthplace, it must 
be from such a point as San Antonio, and not from a 
garrison town. Eunice and Inez gladly took the care 
of her; and Colonel Trevino formally prepared a new 
passport which should describe her and her condition 
also. 

“ I have added your name, Monsieur Philippe,” said 
the hospitable colonel. “ I see you joined the party 
after the marquis’s pass was filled. Ah me! the 
marquis is growing a little drowsy, after all! ” and he 
laughed with that conceit with which a rival bureau 
always detects errors in the administration of the 
establishment “ over the way.” 

And so, after every conceivable delay, innumerable 
adios } and commendations to the Virgin, the little 
party started again. To the last, Blackburn, Rich¬ 
ards, Adams, and King were taken for granted as 
part of the party. They asked no questions; and 
the colonel, with all his formalities, never asked them 
where they joined or where they were to leave. 


116 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

With no prospect of other detention before arriving 
at San Antonio, they all pushed out into what was 
very nearly desert country. 

The afternoon was well advanced, when they made 
the halt — which with- an earlier start would have 
been made earlier — for a rest from the saddle, and 
to give the beasts a chance for food. The ladies sat 
on their shawls a little away from the caravan proper; 
and Harrod, with some help from Ransom, improvised 
a screen from the wind by stretching his own blanket 
above some stakes driven into the ground. 

The first care had been to send notes and messages 
to Captain Nolan, who was supposed to be not far 
away. These were intrusted to Blackburn, and to old 
Caesar, whom Blackburn had persuaded to join him 
for a few days. After their departure the encamp¬ 
ment took on an air of tranquil repose. 

“We are as happy as Arabs,” said Inez. 

“ As happy as Ma-ry here would be in your father’s 
salon on the plantation,” said Harrod. “Ask her if 
she sees anything piquant or strange in lunching al 
fresco here.” 

“ Ask her,” said Eunice, “ what she makes of Ran¬ 
som’s Boston crackers, and whether she would rather 
have a rabbit a la mesquit .” 

“Ah, well! ” said Harrod, “ the rarity of the thing 
is all very well; but, when Miss Inez here has lunched 
twenty days more al fresco , she will be glad to find 
herself in her aunt’s inner chamber — ” 

“ As Ma-ry will, after twenty days of the salon life, 
to find herself on a mustang horse, riding after ante¬ 
lopes,” said Inez, this time sadly. 


or, Show your Passports 117 

“ Miss Inez, I do not believe a word of it.” 

“ A word of what? ” 

“ Of what you are afraid of, — that this girl has be¬ 
come a child of the forest, and is going to love mus¬ 
tangs and antelopes and mesquit-bushes and grilled 
rabbits, more than she will love books and guitars 
and the church and a Christian home. Blood is 
a good deal thicker than water, Miss Inez; and blood 
will tell.” 

“ Seventeen years go a good way, Mr. Harrod; 
and she must be as old as I am,” said Inez, as if she 
herself were the person of most experience in this 
world. 

“ But seventeen centuries go farther,” said he; 
“ and I may say eighteen, lacking two months, I 
believe. Oh, Miss Inez ! trust a man who has seen 
white skins, and black skins, and red skins, and olive 
skins, and skins so dirty that they had no color. 
Trust me who speak to you. If the sins of the 
fathers go to the children for the third and fourth 
generation,” — there was no banter in his tone now; 
but all this was in serious earnest, — “ shall not the 
virtues of the mothers, and their loves, and even their 
fancies and their tastes? Shall not their faith and 
hope, shall not their prayer, have a hold deeper than 
a little calico or flannel? Does not your command¬ 
ment say, ‘ through all generations for those who love 
Him?’ and do you not suppose that means some¬ 
thing?” 

It was the first time Harrod had spoken with quite 
this earnestness of feeling. To Eunice it was not 
unexpected, however. She had seen, from his first 


11 8 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

salute at the encampment, that he was every inch a 
man. To Inez there was all the satisfaction which 
comes to every girl of yesterday when some person 
of insight sees that she is a woman to-day. The 
change from boy to man takes years, and is marked 
by a thousand slow gradations. The change from 
girl to woman is well-nigh immediate. But the 
woman just born cannot scream out, “ The world is 
all changed to me. Why will you talk to me as if I 
were playing with my doll?” All the same is she 
grateful to him or her who finds out this change; 
and so Inez was grateful to William Harrod now. 

“You see,” said Harrod, “I was born close to the 
frontier; and since I can remember I have been on 
it and of it. Dear old Daniel Boone— have you ever 
i hearn tell ’ of him, Miss Perry? — dear old Daniel 
Boone, many is the time that he has spent the weeks 
of a winter storm and clearing at my father’s; and 
many is the tramp that I have taken with him and 
with his sons. I fired his rifle before I was ten years 
old. Yes; and I have seen this thing always. Why! 
when I was a little boy I have seen our dear Elder 
Brainerd take these savage boys, and be good to them 
and helpful, and let them cheat him and lie to him; 
and since then I have seen them go off like hawks 
when they smelt carrion. And I have seen — well, I 
have seen Daniel Boone, who had slept under the sky 
as they sleep, had starved as they starve, had frozen 
as they freeze ; and he would come to my dear moth¬ 
er’s table as perfect and finished a gentleman as there 
is in Orleans or Paris. Dear Miss Perry, there is 
such a thing as race, and blood does tell.” 


or, Show your Passports 119 

“And I hope it tells in something better than 
choice of places to lunch in,” said Inez. 

“ Yes, indeed,” said the young fellow, who was on 
one of his hobbies now. “You shall see that your 
pretty Ma-ry will be a lady of the land, if you can 
once see her in her land. As for these Greasers , I do 
not know that I rate them as of much more help to 
her than so many Caddoes or Apaches. Oh, dear! 
how I hate them! ” and he laughed heartily. 

“ Pray do not say so to Inez,” said her aunt. “ You 
do not guess yet how hard I find it to make her loyal 
to her sovereign.” 

“Most estimable of duennas,” cried Inez, “pray 
do not say that again for a week. Let me mildly 
represent to your grace, that your unsuspected loyalty 
to the most gracious of masters, and to the loveliest 
of queens, has led you to make this protest daily 
since her Majesty’s sacred birthday—blessed be her 
gracious life and her sweet memory! — recalled to 
your loveliness’s recollection your duty to your hon¬ 
ored sovereign. There, you darling old tease, can I 
not do it as well as you can? And do not the adjec¬ 
tives and compliments roll out rather more graciously 
in the language of Squam Bay than even in the 
glorious Castilian itself? Oh, dear! 1 wish I could 
set Ransom to translate one of the Bishop’s prelec¬ 
tions on royalty into genuine Yankee.” 

“ Do it yourself,” said Harrod, who was rapidly 
gaining all Nolan’s enthusiasm for the old man. 

And Inez attempted a rapid imitation. 

“ There,” said she, “ it is the day of our Lady of 
the Sacred Torch; and, by a miraculous coincidence, 


I 20 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

it happens also to be the day of the Santissima Luisa, 
the patron saint of my beloved, most honored, and 
never-to-be-forgotten queen and sovereign lady. And, 
as the bishop rides to the cathedral, by a great mis¬ 
fortune the wheels of the carriage of the most right 
reverend and best-beloved father come off in the fosse 
or ditch just in front of the palace of the governor of 
my most gracious sovereign Charles the Fourth, and 
the holy father is thrown forward into the mud.” 

“ Inez, you shall not run on so.” 

“ Dear duenna, hold your peace: I shall and I will. 
And all shall be said decently and in order. 

“ Word is carried of the misfortune to the cathe¬ 
dral, where Ransom is waiting in the sacristy, with a 
note from Miss Eunice Perry, heretic though she be, 
and fated to be burned when her time comes, invit¬ 
ing the most reverend and beloved father to dinner. 
Ransom observes the dangers to the elect, should the 
prolocution in honor of my gracious and never-to-be- 
forgotten queen be omitted. By a happy instinct he 
slips off his white jacket, and with grace and ease 
slips on the tunic, which seems to him most to re¬ 
semble the Calvinistic gown of his childhood; and 
then, preceded by acolytes, and followed by thurifers, 
he mounts to the pulpit, just as the faithful are turn¬ 
ing away disappointed, and says, — 

“‘It’s all nonsense, V I told the biship so, last 
time I see him. I says, says I, them hubs to the 
wheels of you coach ain’t fit for nothin’, they ain’t; 
and ef you will ride in it you ’ll break down some day, 
an’ good enough for you. ’N’ now he has broke 
down, jest as I told him he would, ’n* he can’t preach 



121 


or. Show your Passports 

the queen’s sermon. I tell you the queen ain’t much, 
but she’s a sight better than you deserve, any on you. 
Ye ain’t fit to have a queen, none on ye; ye don’t 
know nothin’, ’n’ ye don’t know what a real good 
queen is. Ye’d git more’n ye’ve got any rights to, 
ef ye had old George the Third, the beggar; ’n’ he’s 
the wust king that ever wos, or ever will be. The 
queen’s birthday is to-day, so they sez; but they’s 
all liars, and don’t know nothin’, as how should they, 
seein’ they’s all Catholics and niggers together, and 
ain’t learned nothin’? I tell the bishop they ain’t no 
good preachin’ to such a crew as you be; but, becos 
he can’t come himself, I’ve come to tell ye all ye may 
go home.’ ” 

“ Inez, you shall not run on so,” said Eunice, really 
provoked that the girl, who had so much deep feeling 
in her, should sweep into such arrant nonsense. 

“ Dearest Aunt Eunice, you are afraid that I shall 
lose my reputation in the eyes of dear White Hawk 
and of Mr. Harrod. Would you perhaps be so kind 
as to preach the queen’s sermon yourself? ” 

“ That is a way she has, Mr. Harrod ; and I recom¬ 
mend it to you, if you are ever so fortunate as to have 
the education of a young lady of seventeen intrusted 
to you.” 

“This dear Aunt Eunice of mine, who is the love¬ 
liest and kindest duenna that ever was in this world, 
if I do say so, she will rebuke me for my sins, because 
I do not sin to please her; and then she will set the 
example of the way the thing ought to be done. 

“For instance: suppose I am tempted by the 
spirit of evil to imitate the Dona Dulcinea del 


122 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

Tobago, I call her, because her husband, the chief 
justice, smokes all day long; suppose I am tempted 
to imitate her, — I sit down at my piano-forte, and I 
just begin, — 

‘Oh, happy souls ! by death at length set free, 

when my dear aunt says, ‘You shall not do so, Inez: 
it is very wrong.’ And then I begin again, and she 
says, ‘ Inez, it is very improper.’ And then, if I begin 
a third time, she says, ‘ Inez, if you will do anything 
so absurd, pray do it correctly. Let me sit there. 
I will show you how she sings it; ’ and then she 
makes the Doha Dulcinea ten times as absurd as I 
could, because she has heard her ten times as often. 
— You are the dearest old aunt that ever was, and I 
am the worst tease that ever was born.” 

And she flung herself on the neck of her aunt, and 
kissed her again and again. 

Meanwhile the White Hawk sat amused beyond 
expression, and mystified quite as much by what was 
to her only a pantomime, in which she could not make 
out one term in ten. 

As Inez ceased her eulogy, she looked around 
upon the girl, and caught the roguish twinkle of her 
eye, and could not but turn to her, and kiss her as 
eagerly as she had kissed her aunt, though from a 
sentiment wholly different. 

For both these ladies watched the White Hawk 
with the feeling with which you would watch an 
infant, mingled with that with which you regard a 
woman. “ What does she think? How does this all 
seem ? What would she say if she could speak to us ? ” 


or. Show your Passports 123 

The range of her pantomime, and the spirit and 
truth of Harrod’s interpretation of it, were enough to 
express things, and to make them feel, just up to a 
certain point, that here was a woman closely tied to 
them, sympathizing with them, as they, indeed, with 
her. But where things stopped, and ideas began,— 
just where they wanted language most, — language 
stopped for them, and White Hawk seemed like a 
child of whose resources even they knew nothing. 
It was a comfort to Inez to overwhelm her with this 
storm of kisses, and a comfort to the other also. 

“ She must learn to speak to us. And, while we 
are on the trail here, she shall learn her own language. 
We will not make her talk about your ‘ loftiness ’ and 
your ‘ serenity,’ Miss Eunice.” 

“ Dear, dear Ma-ry,” said the girl, turning to her 
again, and speaking very slowly, as if that would help, 
“ do say something to me. Talk baby-talk, dear 
Ma-ry.” 

And then she tried her with “ ma-ma;” and, as 
before, it was very certain that “ Ma-ry” knew what 
these syllables meant. And with a wild eagerness she 
would listen to what Inez said to her, and then would 
try to form words like Inez’s words. Perhaps she 
had some lingering memory of what her mother had 
taught her; but the words would not come. 

“Then, if I cannot teach you, you shall teach me, 
dear Ma-ry.” And so the two girls began, with Har¬ 
rod’s aid, to work out the chief central signs of the 
language of pantomime; and, when Inez found 
her chance, she would make “Ma-ry” repeat in 
English this word or that, which the girl caught 



124 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

quickly. The readiness of her organs for this speech 
was enough to show that she had had some training 
in it when she was yet very young. 

In this double schooling the girls passed the after¬ 
noon, for many miles after they were all in the saddle 
again. Indeed, it became occupation and amusement 
for all the leaders of the party for day after day in 
their not very eventful journey. Their fortune did 
not differ from that of most travellers in such an 
expedition. The spirit and freshness of an open-air 
life lifted them well over the discomforts of a begin¬ 
ning; and when the bivouac, the trail, and the forest 
began to be an old story, the experience gained in a 
thousand details made compensation for the lack of 
novelty and consequent excitement. For some days 
from Nacogdoches, the trail led them through woods, 
only occasionally broken by little prairies. A little 
Spanish post at the Trinity River, and once or twice 
the humble beginnings of some settler on the trail, 
vary the yellow pages of poor little Inez’s diary. But 
the party were beginning to grow reckless, in com¬ 
parison with their caution at the outset, — reckless 
merely because they had been so favored in the 
weather and in the monotonous safety of their march, 
— when they were recalled, only too suddenly, to the 
sense of the danger which always hangs over such 
travellers in the wilderness. 

Harrod had sent on his men in advance, as had 
come to be the custom, with directions to select the 
position for the camp, and have the ladies’ tents 
ready before the caravan proper arrived. Adams 
and Richards found that a bayou known as the Little 


or, Show your Passports 1 2 5 

Brassos was so swollen that the passage would be 
perhaps circuitous and certainly difficult, and, with fit 
discretion, fixed their camp on high land above the 
water’s edge, although by this location the party 
made a march shorter by an hour than was usual. 
Nobody complained, however, of the early release 
from the saddle, the two young people least of all. 
A few minutes were enough for them to refit them¬ 
selves ; and there was then half an hour left before 
the late dinner or early supper—now called by one 
name, and now by another — which always closed 
the day. 

Harrod’s directions were absolute, and Ransom’s as 
well, that there should be no straggling, not the least, 
from the camp; and the girls were least inclined of 
any to disregard them. Certainly poor little Inez had 
no thought of disobedience, when she pointed out to 
Harrod a little knoll, hardly five rods from where 
they stood, and said to him that it must command a 
better view of the bayou than they had at the camp 
itself, and she would try once again if she could 
make any manner of sketch there, which would serve 
as a suggestion of the journey to her father. For 
both Eunice and Inez had cultivated some little talent 
they had in this way; and besides the fiddle-faddle in 
work on ivory, which was a not unusual accomplish¬ 
ment for French ladies in their time, each of them 
had tried to train herself — and Eunice had with 
some success trained Inez — in drawing, in the open 
air, from nature. In the close forest of the first few 
days from Nacogdoches, Inez had found few opportu¬ 
nities for her little sketch-book; and Harrod encour- 


126 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

aged her in her proposal now, and promised to join 
her so soon as the horses were all unpacked and fitly 
tethered for the night. 

Inez sat there for a minute, made the notes in her 
diary (which in yellow ink on yellow paper still 
appear on that page), and then left the book open 
while she ran down to the edge of the bayou to fill 
the water-bottle of her paint-box. She was surprised 
and interested to see the variety of the footmarks of 
the different beasts who had come to the same spot 
before her for drink. A large log of a fallen tree lay 
over the water; and the fearless girl, who was not 
without practice in such gymnastics in her plantation 
life, ran out upon it to fill her little flask with water as 
clear as she could find. 

Here her view up and down the little lake — for 
lake it seemed — widened on each side. The sky 
was clouded so that Inez lost the lights of the after¬ 
noon sun, but still it was a scene of wonderful beauty. 
The dark shadows, crimson and scarlet, of the 
autumn foliage, the tall, clear-cut oak, whose lines 
were so sharp against the sky, were all perfectly 
reflected in the water, with a distinctness so vivid that 
she had only to bend her head, and look under her 
arm, to make the real heavens seem the deception, 
and the reflection the reality. From the distance her 
attention was gradually called to her own shore: a 
great water-snake poked his head above the water, 
and really seemed to look at her for a moment, then 
with an angry flash broke the smooth surface for a 
moment, and plunged out of sight. Great bunches of 
water-grapes hung near her; bright leaves of persiul- 


or, Show your Passports 127 

mon, red oak and red bay, swamp oak and tupelo, 
were all around her, and tempted her to make a little 
bouquet for the supper-table. Her quarters in the 
branches of the fallen tree were not extensive. But 
the girl was active, and was diligently culling her 
various colors, when her eye caught sight in the 
water of a treasure she had coveted since she met the 
Caddo Indians, — the great seed-vessels, namely, of 
the gigantic water-lily of those regions, the Nelumbo 
hitea , or sacred “ bean of India.” 

Were they beyond reach? If they were, Ransom 
would come down for her in a minute in the morning, 
before they started. But, if she had not this pro¬ 
voking hat and shawl on, could she not clamber down 
to the water’s edge among the small branches, and 
with a stick break them off so they could be floated 
in? It W'as worth the trial. And so the girl hung 
up the offending hat with the shawl, broke off the 
strongest bough she could manage, and descended to 
the water’s edge again for her foraging. 

It took longer than' she meant, for the rattles were 
very provoking. Rattles^ be it said, these great seed- 
vessels are, in the Indian economies; and it was for 
rattles in dancing that Miss Inez thought them so 
well worth collecting. Now, with much pulling and 
hauling, three of them consented to loosen them¬ 
selves from their anchorage, and, to Inez’s delight, 
began to float slowly across to the other side of her 
little cove. Now she had only to run around there, 
and secure her prizes. But as. she turned to recover 
her hat and shawl, and to work shoreward with her 
not-forgotten bouquet, looking out through the bushes 


128 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

upon the little opening in the shrubbery which had 
been her path, the girl saw what she knew in an 
instant must be the gigantic Texas panther, quietly 
walking down to the water, with two little cubs at its 
side. Inez was frightened : of that there is no doubt. 
And to herself she owned she was frightened. She 
would have been frightened had she met the beast on 
the travelled trail; but here the panther had her at 
disadvantage. She had, however, the presence of 
mind to utter no sound. If the panther had not 
made her out hidden in the shrubbery, she would not 
call his attention. Would he be good enough to lap 
his water, and go his way, perhaps? 

So she waited, her heart in her mouth, not daring 
to wink, as she looked through the little opening in 
the tupelo beside her. These, then, were the foot¬ 
marks which she had been wondering about, and had 
thought might be the prints of bears. Bears, indeed ! 
Much did she know of bears ! Would the creature 
never be done? What did she know about panthers? 
Did panthers drink enough for nine days, like camels? 
At last the panther had drunk enough — and the 
little panthers. But then another process began. 
They all had to make their ablutions. If Inez had 
not been wretched she could have laughed to see the 
giant beast lapping her paws, just as her dear old 
Florinda did at home, and purring its approval over 
the little wretches, as they did the same. But now 
she had rather cry than laugh. Should she have to 
stay here all night? Had she better stay all night or 
risk everything by a cry that they could hear at camp ? 
Would they hear her at the camp if she did cry? 


or, Show your Passports 129 

There is no reason to suppose that the poor girl was 
left twenty minutes in her enforced silence, stiff with 
the posture in which she stood, and cold with fear and 
with the night mist which, even before the sun went 
down, began to creep up from the bayou; but it 
seemed to her twenty hours, and well it might. Still 
it did not last forever. The cubs at last finished 
washing the last claw of the last leg; and the old lady 
panther, or old gentleman, whichever the sex may 
have been, seemed satisfied that here was no place for 
spending the night. Perhaps some rustle in the 
shrubbery gave sign of game. Anyway, without 
noise, the great beast turned on its tracks, paused a 
moment, and then made one great bound inland, fol¬ 
lowed by the little ones. Inez had some faith left in 
her in the power of the human voice; and she did 
her best to stimulate their flight by one piercing 
scream, which she changed into a war-whoop, accord¬ 
ing to the best directions which White Hawk had 
given her,— a feminine war-whoop, a war-whoop of 
the soprano or treble variety, but still a war-whoop. 
As such it was received apparently by the panthers, 
who made no tarry, but were seen no more. 

Inez hastened to avail herself of her victory. Hat 
and shawl were recovered. Firmly and quickly she 
extricated herself from the labyrinth of boughs of the 
fallen cottonwood tree, and almost ran, in her ner¬ 
vous triumph, along its trunk to the shore. Up the 
beaten pathway she ran, marking now the fresh im¬ 
pression of the beasts’ tracks before her. Once and 
again she cried aloud, hoping that she might be 
heard in the camp. She had left, and remembered 

9 


130 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

she had left, her note-book and her sketch-book on 
the knoll. But they might go. For herself, the sight 
of the tents was all in all; and she turned from the 
path she followed as she came down, all the more 
willingly because she saw the panthers had followed it 
also, to run along the broader way, better marked, 
which kept upon the level to the beaten trail of 
travel. 

“ Broader way, and better marked.” Oh, Inez, 
Inez ! broad is the way that leads to destruction; and 
how many simple wood-farers, nay, how many skilled 
in wood-craft, have remembered this text when it was 
too late to profit by it! Three minutes were enough 
to show the girl that this better-marked track did not 
lead to the travelled trail. It turned off just as it 
should not do, and it clung to the bayou. This would 
never do. They would miss her at the tents, and be 
frightened. Panther or no panther, she would go up 
over the knoll. So she turned back on her steps, and 
began to run now, because she knew how nervous her 
aunt would be. And again the girl shouted cheerily, 
called on the highest key, and sounded her newly 
learned war-whoop. 

But, as she ran, the path confused her. Could she 
have passed that flaming sassafras without so much as 
noticing it? Anyway, she should recognize the 
great mass of bays where she had last noticed the 
panthers’ tracks. She had seen them as she ran 
down, and as she came up. She hurried on; but she 
certainly had returned much farther than she went, 
when she came out on a strange log flung up in some 
freshet, which she knew she had not seen before. 


or. Show your Passports 131 

And there was no clump of bays. Was this being 
lost? Was she lost? 

Why, Inez had to confess to herself that she was 
lost just a little bit, but nothing to be afraid of; but 
still lost enough to talk about afterwards, she cer¬ 
tainly was. 

Yet, as she said to herself again and again, she 
could not be a quarter of a mile, nor half a quarter of 
a mile, from camp. As soon as they missed her,— 
and by this time they had missed her, — they would 
be out to look for her. How provoking that she, of 
all the party, should make so much bother to the 
rest! They would watch her now like so many cats 
all the rest of the.way. What a fool she was ever to 
leave the knoll! 

So Inez stopped again, shouted again, and listened, 
and listened to hear nothing but a swamp-owl. 

If the sky had been clear, she would have had no 
cause for anxiety. In that case they would have 
light enough to find her in. She would have had the 
sunset glow to steer by; and she would have had no 
difficulty in finding them. But, with this horrid 
gray over everything, she dared not turn round, 
without fearing that she might lose the direction in 
which the theory of the moment told her she ought 
to be faring. And these openings which she had called 
trails—which were probably broken by wild horses 
and wild oxen as they came down to the bayou to 
drink — would not go in one direction for ten paces. 
They bent right and left, this way and that; so that, 
without some sure token of sun or star, it was im¬ 
possible, as Inez felt, to know which way she was 
walking. 


132 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

And at last, as this perplexity increased, she was 
conscious that the sun must have set, and that the 
twilight, never long, was now fairly upon her. All 
the time there was this fearful silence, only broken by 
her own voice and that hateful owl. Was she wise 
to keep on in her theories of this way or that way? 
She had never yet come back, either upon the fallen 
cottonwood tree, or upon the bunch of bays which 
was her landmark; and it was doubtless her wisest 
determination to stay where she was. The chances 
that the larger party would find her were much 
greater than that she alone would find them; but by 
this time she was sure that, if she kept on in any 
direction, there was an even chance that she was go¬ 
ing farther and farther wrong. 

But it was too cold for her to sit down, wrap herself 
never so closely in her shawl. The poor girl tried 
this. She must keep in motion. Back and forth she 
walked, fixing her march by signs which she could 
not mistake, even in the gathering darkness. How 
fast that darkness gathered ! The wind seemed to 
rise, too, as the night came on; and a fine rain, that 
seemed as cold as snow to her, came to give the last 
drop to her wretchedness. If she were tempted for a 
moment to abandon her sentry beat, and try this wild 
experiment or that to the right or left, some odious 
fallen trunk, wet with moss and decay, lay just where 
she pressed in to the shrubbery, as if placed there to 
reveal to her her absolute powerlessness. She was 
dead with cold, and even in all her wretchedness 
knew that she was hungry. How stupid to be hun¬ 
gry when she had so much else to trouble her! But 


or, Show your Passports 133 

at least she would make a system of her march. She 
would walk fifty times this way, to the stump, and 
fifty times that way; then she would stop, and cry 
out, and sound her war-whoop ; then she would take 
up her sentry march again. And so she did. This 
way, at least, time would not pass without her know¬ 
ing whether it were near midnight or no, 

“Hark! God be praised, there is a gun! and 
there is another! and there is another! They have 
come on the right track, and I am safe! ” So she 
shouted again, and sounded her war-whoop again, 
and listened, — and then again, and listened again. 
One more gun! but then no more! Poor Inez! 
Certainly they were all on one side of her. If only it 
were not so piteously dark! If she could only work 
half the distance in that direction which her fifty sen¬ 
try beats made put together! But when she strug¬ 
gled that way through the tangle, and over one wet 
log and another, it was only to find her poor wet feet 
sinking down into mud and water ! She did not dare 
keep on. All that was left for her was to find her 
tramping ground again; and this she did. 

“ Good God, take care of me! My poor dear 
father, — what would he say if he knew his child was 
dying close to her friends? Dear mamma, keep 
watch over your little girl!” 


1 34 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER X 

LIFE ON THE BRASSOS 

“ As yet a colt he stalks with lofty pace, 

And balances his limbs with flexile grace ; 

First leads the way, the threatening torrent braves, 

And dares the unknown arch that spans the waves. 

Light on his airy crest his slender head, 

His belly short, his loins luxuriant spread ; 

Muscle on muscle knots his brawny breast; 

No fear alarms him, nor vain shouts molest. 

But, at the clash of arms, his ear afar 

Drinks the deep sound, and vibrates to the war; 

Flames from each nostril roll in gathered stream; 

His quivering limbs with restless motion gleam; 

O’er his right shoulder, floating full and fair, 

Sweeps his thick mane, and spreads its pomp of hair; 

Swift works his double spine, and earth around 
Rings to his solid hoof that wears the ground.” 

Sotheby. 

But it is time that this history should return from 
tracing the varying fortunes of one of the companies 
of Philip Nolan’s friends, to look at the fortunes of 
that other company whom he had himself enlisted, 
and to whom he had returned when he left Eunice 
and Inez, in care of Harrod for the moment, near 
the ferry of the Sabine River. 

Had we diaries as full of these movements as we 
have of those of Eunice and Inez, which have proved 
of less account in history, this chapter might take 
fuller proportions than those which have brought 
those ladies to the waters of the Brassos River. It 



or. Show your Passports 135 

proved that the expedition of young men led by 
Nolan, from Natchez and Texas, was destined to 
meet the Spanish army in array of battle. Here wa > 
the first of those trials of strength between the de¬ 
scendants of Cortez and his men on the one hand 
and the descendants of New Englanders and Virgin¬ 
ians on the other, which were to end in the inde¬ 
pendence of Texas forty years after . 1 But of this! 
expedition we have now scarcely a record,—none 
excepting one memoir from its youngest member, 
as drawn up by him after the expiration of a quar¬ 
ter of a century. Of the false and crafty pursuit 
by the Spanish forces, the archives of Texas and 
Mexico are full. The Spanish Armada did not 
cause more alarm in England than poor Phil 
Nolan’s horse-hunting expedition among the very 
officers who had given him his right to enter their 
territory. 

As has been already said, the party gathered at 
Natchez, which was Nolan’s home. Natchez, a 
settlement of some six hundred persons, was now 
an American town, having passed under the flag of 
the United States a year or two before. It had been 
founded by the French, however ; and the Spanish 
Government gave up the administration only after 
severe pressure, and indeed with riotous disturbances 
of the inhabitants. For it was becoming the head-. 
quarters of the Western race of men; and, when 
they suspected that the Spanish Government was 
slow in its execution of the treaty which provided for 
the surrender of Natchez to our own sway, their 
1 No, not “ to end, ” as I thought in 1876, — E. E. H7, 1899. 



136 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

indignation knew no bounds. In such a community 
as this it is not difficult to fancy the feeling excited 
by the examination of Nolan — of which we have 
already spoken — when Vidal, the Spanish consul, 
complained that he was about to invade the territory 
of Mexico. 

Nolan had, in fact, enrolled a company of more 
than twenty men on this expedition — the third 
which he had undertaken in his trading for wild 
horses. It was admitted on all hands, that this trade 
was prohibited under the general restrictions which 
grew out of the hateful policy of that hateful wretch, 
Philip the Second — Bloody Mary’s husband, let it 
be reverently remembered in passing. But in this 
case Don Pedro de Nava, the commandant-general of 
the northeastern provinces of New Spain, had given 
Nolan a formal permission to carry it on. The 
horses were indeed needed in the Spanish garrisons 
in Louisiana. On his several returns to Orleans, 
Nolan had sent presents of handsome horses to the 
governor, as token of his success. And when these 
facts appeared on the hearing before Judge Bruen, 
the American judge, he said that this could not be 
regarded as a hostile expedition against a friendly 
power ; it was a trading expedition permitted in form 
by the authorities of that power. The United States, 
he said, was not bound to intervene, nor would it 
intervene in any way. 

Accordingly the gay young party started, full of 
life and hope. I am afraid no man of them would 
have turned back had Judge Bruen addressed them 
paternally, and told them that they were violating 


1 37 


or, Show your Passports 

the neutrality of the United States by an attack upon 
the territory of its friends. I am afraid none of them 
loved the King of Spain. But I am bound to say 
that, so far as three-quarters of a century has un¬ 
locked the secrets of the past, there is no evidence 
that Philip Nolan spoke untruly that day, or that he 
had any foolish notion of invasion or conquest. The 
reader will see that his conduct, and that of his men, 
show no signs of any such notion ; and neither the 
archives of Mexico nor of America have divulged 
any word to imply it. 1 

1 The writer begs to acknowledge the courtesy with which Mr. 
Fish and Mr. Jefferson, the accomplished keeper of rolls, as well as 
General Belknap at the War Office, have made every research in the 
national archives which would throw any light on the darker places 
of this history. The following letter to Philip Nolan, a copy of which 
has been preserved in the State Department, is so curious that even 
the reader of a novel may pause to look at it: — 

Thomas Jefferson to Philip Nolan. 

Philadelphia, June, 1798. 

Sir, — It is some time since I have understood that there are large 
herds of horses in a wild state in the country west of the Mississippi, 
and have been desirous of obtaining details of their history in that 
State. Mr. Brown, Senator from Kentucky, informs me it would be 
in your power to give interesting information on this subject, and 
encourages me to ask it. The circumstances of the Old World have, 
beyond the records of history, been such as admitted not that animal 
to exist in a state of nature. The condition of America is rapidly 
advancing to the same. The present, then, is probably the only 
moment in the age of the world, and the herds above mentioned the 
only subjects, of which we can avail ourselves to obtain what has 
never yet been recorded, and never can be again, in all probability. 
I will add that your information is the sole reliance, as far as I can at 
present see, for obtaining this desideratum. You will render to 
natural history a very acceptable service, therefore, if you will enable 
our Philosophical Society to add so interesting a chapter to the 


138 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

The young fellows crossed the Mississippi at Wal¬ 
nut Hills, 1 above Natchez, and rode westerly. Their 
route would thus lie between the posts of Natch¬ 
itoches and Washita, — both of them old French 
posts, now held by Spanish garrisons. The Spanish 
consul at Natchez had sent word to the commandant 
at Washita that this band was coming ; and he sent 
out'a party of dragoons to meet them. This was the 
party of which the reader has heard already. They 
were more than twice as numerous as Nolan’s men, 
but they hesitated to attack him, as well they might. 
For, whether he had or had not any right to bring 
horses out from New Spain, he was not yet in New 
Spain: he was still in Louisiana. More than this, as 
has been said, he carried with him the permission of 
the Spanish Governor to cross the frontier for the 
purposes of his trade. 

The Spanish captain therefore pretended that he 
had only come out to hunt for some horses he had 

history of this animal. I need not specify to you the particular facts 
asked for, as your knowledge of the animal in his domesticated, as 
well as his wild state, will naturally have led your attention to those 
particulars in the manners, habits, and laws of his existence, which 
are peculiar to his wild state. I wish you not to be anxious about the 
form of your information: the exactness of the substance alone is 
material; and if, after giving in a first letter all the facts you at pres¬ 
ent possess, you could be s.o good on subsequent occasions as to fur¬ 
nish such others in addition as you may acquire from time to time, 
your communications will always be thankfully received. If addressed 
to me at Monticello, and put into any post-office of Kentucky or Ten¬ 
nessee, they will reach me speedily and safely, and will be considered 
as obligations on, sir, 

Your most obedient, humble servant, 

Mr. Nolan. Th : Jefferson. 

1 Now Vicksburg. 


or, Show your Passports 139 

lost. But, as Nolan observed, so soon as he advanced 
with his friends, the Spanish soldiers turned and 
dogged him; nor did he lose sight of them till he 
passed the garrison to which they belonged. He 
declined to go into Washita, and for the same reason 
declined to bring his party into Natchitoches, as we 
have seen. They crossed the Washita River, rode 
merrily on and on till they came to the Red River, their 
party being diminished only by the absence of Har- 
rod, Richards, Adams, and King. When Blackburn 
had joined, Caesar had joined also; for Caesar had an 
enthusiasm for Captain Nolan, and thought to see wild 
life, to collect silver, and to return soon to Miss Inez. 
Under the captain’s lead, so soon as he had deter¬ 
mined to give Natchitoches the go-by, they kept on 
the east side from the Red River, till they came to 
the village of the Caddoes. Among these good- 
natured and friendly people they stayed long enough 
to build a raft and ferry their horses over; and now 
the real enterprise for which they had started was 
begun. 

The Caddoes were not yet used to visits from 
whites, though they had learned to take their furs to 
Natchitoches every year to sell. The Americans 
found them in this “ month of turkeys,” as they called 
October, or the “ moon ” which filled the greater part 
of October, enjoying the holiday of an Indian’s life. 
Their lodges were made by a framework of poles 
placed in a circle in the ground, with the tops united 
in an oval form. This framework was tightly bound 
together, and the whole nicely thatched. Within, 
every person had a “ bunk ” of his own, raised from 


140 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

the ground, and covered with buffalo-skins, — not an 
uncomfortable house. Many of these youngsters 
who visited them here had been born in log cabins 
which had not so much room upon the floor, for 
these lodges covered a circle which was twenty-five 
feet in diameter. More than once, as the party went 
forward, w r ere the members of it glad to accept the 
hospitality which such lodges offered, and more 
than once glad to build such for their own quarters. 

And, from this moment, the work and the play of 
the little party began. Nolan was encouraged so 
soon as he learned that his presence and escort for 
the party of ladies were no longer needed. One day 
he was negotiating with Twowokanies,— friendly 
people enough when they saw the strength of the 
long-knives; he bought from them some fine horses, 
and so the business of the expedition prospered. 
Six days more brought them to Trinity River, and 
across it. All these young men were used to open 
prairie life, with its freedom and adventure; but only 
the six Spaniards of the party, Nolan himself, and 
one or two of the Americans, had ever taken wild 
horses in fair chase with the lasso. The use of it 
was still to be taught and learned, as the warm days 
of October and November passed. While Eunice 
and Inez were wending westward from Nacogdoches, j 
many was the frolic, and many the upset, the empty 
saddle, and the hair-breadth escape, by which the 
greenhorns of this other party were broken into their 
new business. But it was a jolly and a hearty life; 
and no man regretted the adventure while buffalo- 
meat and fine weather lasted. 




or, Show your Passports 141 

As they crossed the divide between the Trinity and 
the Brassos, moving on a parallel line with the 
smaller party, the supply of buffalo-meat gave out; 
and they had to try the experiment of horse-flesh. 
But there were few of them whose fathers and grand¬ 
fathers had not tried that before them, though few of 
them guessed that it was to be made fashionable in 
Parisian cafes. As long ago as the days of Philip of 
Mount Hope, the savage who entertained Captain 
Church offered him his choice of “cow-beef” or 
“ horse-beef.” With the Brassos River came good 
fare again, — elk, antelope, turkeys, buffaloes, and 
wild horses by thousands.. 

So the captain directed that here the camp should 
be established; and here “ Nolan’s River” still flows, 
to maintain the memory of this camp, and of the 
gallant pioneer who built it for a generation which 
has, alas! well-nigh forgotten him. Wild horses are 
but an uncertain, shall one say a skittish property? 
It is said of all riches, that “ they take to themselves 
wings, and fly.” Of that form of wealth which Nolan 
and his friends were collecting, the essential and 
special worth is that they do not have to take to them¬ 
selves legs, but are all ready at any moment to flee. 
Without this quality, indeed, it would cease to be 
wealth. In this case, moreover, the neighborhood of 
Twowokanies, Comanches, Apaches, Lipans, and red¬ 
skins without a name, made the uncertainty of wealth 
still more uncertain. Whatever else was doubtful, 
this was sure, that, if these rascals could run off the 
horses as fast as they were corralled, they would do 
so. And thus to hunt all day, and to keep watch all 



142 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

night, was the duty of the little party as the long 
nights of winter came on. 

The first necessity, therefore, at “Nolan’s River,” 
was to build a corral, or pen, of logs, to be enlarged 
from time to time, as the success of hunting war¬ 
ranted . 1 When the task was over, the hunting went 
forward with more animation; and,,as the new year 
turned, the young fellows rejoiced in a drove of three 
hundred fine horses, which, as they promised them¬ 
selves, they should take to a good market in Louisi¬ 
ana and in the Mississippi territory, as soon as the 
spring should open. Camp-life had its usual adven¬ 
tures ; but the great occasion of the winter was the 
arrival of a party of two hundred Comanches, men, 
women, and children, on their way to the Red River. 
Several tribes of different names met at this place. 
A great chief named Nicoroco had summoned them 
together there. The young whites smoked the pipe 
of peace with them all, gave them presents as they 
could, and thought they had opened amicable rela¬ 
tions with them. And so they returned to their 
corral and their hunting. 

Blackburn had joined, with Caesar. But to the 
surprise of all, — that of the captain most of all,— 
Harrod and his squad did not appear. 

Of all the winter’s sojourn there, this reader need 
now be delayed only by the following letter, which 
opens the plans and hopes, the annoyances and 
failures, of Captain Nolan: — 

1 The spot is not known. Some of my correspondents in Texas 
place it as far south as Waco County, but the name " Nolan’s 
River ” makes this doubtful. 


or. Show your Passports 143 

Philip Nolan to Eunice Perry. 

Nolan’s River in the Wilderness, 

4th day of the month of chestnuts. 

Last year of the old century. 

My dear Miss Perry, — If you think me dead, this 
letter undeceives you. If you think me faithless, let me 
try to undeceive you. If, which is impossible, you think I 
have forgotten you or Miss Inez, no words that I can write 
will undeceive you. 

Blackburn joined us safely at the crossing of Trinity 
River, and brought us news from you not three days old. 
I have to thank you for your letter, and Miss Inez for her 
little postscript, for which I will repay her yet. You were 
right in thinking that the news which Will sent of the cor¬ 
diality of the two colonels, and of their determination to pro¬ 
vide escort for you, combined with your own great courtesy 
in relieving me from my promise to your brother, were the 
causes which changed my plans as formed when we parted. 
Nothing but the statement of your own judgment and wish 
would have debarred me from the pleasure of seeing you 
and your niece soon. 

It is very true, as you suspected, that my presence with 
my men gives vigor and unity to their work, which it must 
have if it is to succeed. They are a good set, on the 
whole; but boys are boys, and rangers are rangers, and 
Spaniards are Spaniards. I am sometimes tempted to 
leave them to cut each other’s throats when they stumble 
into one of their quarrels; and then, another day, when all 
has worked well, and they are dancing or singing, or telling 
camp stories round their fire, I wonder that I have ever 
thought them anything but a band of brothers. 

My only anxiety arises from the detention of Will Harrod 


144 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

and his men, who have not joined me ; but I suppose you 
know, better than I, the cause of their delay. 

The great enterprise goes forward happily. I shall hope 
to send Mr. Jefferson a valuable letter. If only I can send 
him a horse across the Alleghanies! I have for your 
brother’s own saddle the handsomest black charger he ever 
set his eyes upon, the stud of the First Consul himself, or 
of your Gracious Majesty Charles the Fourth, not excepted. 
If only the beast escapes “ One Eye,” and the distemper 
and yellow-water, — which may Castor and Pollux grant! 
Are not they the protectors of horses ? An exciting life is 
ours. In the saddle for the whole of daylight, we do not 
lose our anxiety when the night comes on : at least we chiefs 
do not. My boys are snoring around this pine-knot fire, 
while I am writing, as if they knew no care. But it is 
always so. 

“ Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” 

But my fair enemy Miss Inez will never be satisfied, if in 
the wilderness here I end by quoting Shakespeare. Tell her 
it is for her sake that I end my letter with an adventure, 
which she may introduce into her first romance. You 
must know, and she must know, that I and half a dozen of 
my boys have been on a visit to Nicoroco, the great chief 
of chieftains in these regions. The great Wallace himself 
was not so bare-legged as Nicoroco is, nor did his sway ex¬ 
tend nearly so far. Yes, and we smoked calumets of peace 
enough to make Miss Inez sick ten times over, and Miss 
Perry also, unless your new waif— Hawk-Eye, is her name ? 
— have taught you, faster than I believe, the peaceful habits 
of the wilderness. Heavens ! if your royal master’s hand¬ 
some chief commander, the “ Prince of Peace,” as I am 
told he is called, could but have presided, he would never 




or, Show your Passports 145 

have feared the salvajes Americanos any more ! Ah, well ! 
We returned from these pacifications to our corral, our 
buffalo-meat, and our horses, and alas ! a few pacified 
Comanches returned with us. 

What faith can you put in man? Early one morning our 
dear friends departed; and when we shook ourselves a few 
hours after, for our breakfast, we found that, by some acci¬ 
dent not to be explained, they had taken with them all of 
our eleven saddle-horses, and that for the future we were to 
pursue the mustangs on foot, and on foot were to drive 
them through the deserts to Natchez and Orleans! 
This was the interpretation given in effect to all our 
pacifications ! 

What to do ? Quien sabe ? Certainly I did not know. 
But I did know I was neither going to ride a wild mustang 
home, nor appear on foot in the presence of my townsfolk 
the other side of the Father of Waters. So I called for 
volunteers, and your dear old Caesar stepped forth first. 
Three white men joined, ashamed to be outdone by a 
darkey. On foot we started. On foot we followed their 
trail for nine days. Day by day they were more careless. 
Day by day we were more cheerful. The ninth day we 
walked gently into their camp, unsuspected and unexpected. 
There was my old chestnut, whom you rode that Tuesday; 
there were three other of our beasts; and there that even¬ 
ing came in, as innocent as a lamb, my old friend One Eye , 
of whom I have told you before, with some excellent 
friends of his, mounted on the other seven of our brutes. 
This time I took Master One Eye, and tied him to a tree 
for the night, to give him a chance to ponder the principles of 
the Great Calumet. The next morning we helped ourselves 
to all the bear-meat we could carry, and turned our faces 
to Nolan’s River. We were not nine days coming home. 


10 


146 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

There, Miss Inez ! had ever Amadis such an adventure, 
or Robert Bruce, or the Count Odoardo de Rascallo, or 
your handsome hero General Junot? 

It is near midnight, unless Orion tells lies; and the fire 
burns low. 

My homage is in all these lines. A Dios. 

Your ladyship’s most faithful vassal, 

To come or to stay away, 

Philip Nolan. 


CHAPTER XI 

RUMORS OF WARS 

“ With chosen men of Leon, from the city Bernard goes, 

To protect the soil of Spain from the spear of foreign foes,— 
From the city which is planted in the midst between the seas, 
To preserve the name and glory of old Pelayo’s victories.” 

Lockhart. 

Captain Philip Nolan was, when he wrote, in far 
greater danger than he supposed. 

As I write this morning, if any gentleman now by the 
side of“ Nolan’s River” were curious to know if King 
Alfonso spent an agreeable night last night, he could 
send to some station not far away, and his curiosity 
would be relieved before dinner. At least, I suppose 
so. I know that I was favored some hours ago with 
the intelligence, which I did not want, that King Al¬ 
fonso was about to leave Madrid this morning, and 
ride to his army. In truth, as it happens, I know 
better what he is going to do to-day than I know where 
my next neighbor at the foot of the hill is going. 

But, when Philip Nolan wrote these merry words 


or, Show your Passports 147 

to Eunice Perry, he knew little enough of what was 
doing at Madrid; and he knew still less, as it hap¬ 
pened, of what was in the wind at a capital much 
nearer to him. This was the famous and noble city 
of Chihuahua, — a city some three hundred miles 
west of Nolan’s corral. To this distant point I shall 
not have to ask the reader to go again; but, before 
the several pieces on our little board advance another 
step, I must ask him to look for a moment now be¬ 
hind all intermediate pawns, and see what is the 
attitude of him who represents the king, protected 
here by his distant and forgotten bishops, knights, 
and castles. 

Chihuahua was, in the year 1800, a city quite as 
imposing in aspect as it is to-day. To those simple 
people who had to come and go thither for one or 
another measure of justice, injustice, protection, or 
vengeance, it seemed the most magnificent city in the 
world, — wholly surpassing the grandeurs of all other 
frontier or garrison towns. Around the public square 
were built a splendid cathedral, the royal treasury, 
and* a building which served as the hotel-de-ville of 
the administration of the city. The cathedral was 
one of the most splendid in New Spain. It had been 
erected at enormous cost, and was regarded with as¬ 
tonishment and pride by all the people, who had seen 
no statues or pictures to compare with those displayed 
in its adornments. Several noble “ missiones,” a mili¬ 
tary academy, the establishments of the Dominicans, 
Franciscans, and those which the Jesuits had formerly 
built, added to the European aspect of the city. 

Our business with Chihuahua is that, in this city, 


148 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Don Pedro de Nava, the general-commandant of the 
northeastern provinces at this time, held his court. 
Under the administration then existing in New Spain, 
his was an unlimited military authority. In the 
more southern provinces of what is now the Republic 
of Mexico, a system of a sort of courts of appeal 
known as “audiences” had been created as some 
check upon the viceroy and the intendants. But in 
the northern provinces no such system was known, 
and the military law corresponded precisely to the 
definition given in Boston in General Gage’s time: — 

“ 1 st, The commander does as he chooses. 

“ 2d, Military law is the law that permits him to do so.” 

This Governor-General de Nava had, as the reader 
has been told, issued to Nolan a formal permission to 
come from Louisiana for horses, to take such as were 
needed for the remount of the Spanish army, and for 
these purposes to bring with him two thousand dol¬ 
lars’ worth of goods for trade with the Indians. I 
have seen De Nava’s own account of this order in the 
curious archives at San Antonio. Alas! I am afraid 
poor Phil Nolan had no two thousand dollars’ worth 
of goods, and that that part of the permit served him 
little. After De Nava issued it, — on some report to 
Madrid on the subject, or on some new terror there, 
— much stricter orders came to him, which he was 
obliged to repeat to all the local governors. He. 
became painfully aware that his permit to Nolan 
exceeded by far his present power. He does not 
seem to have thought of notifying him that it was 
recalled. He did write to San Antonio and to Nacog- 


or. Show your Passports 149 

doches, to say that nobody else must come for the 
same purpose, but that his permit to Nolan was still 
an excuse for his coming. He said that, as Nolan 
might have with him the two thousand dollars’ worth 
of goods permitted, the commanders at San Antonio 
might take them off his hands for the royal service. 
At the same time he intimated that it was so long 
since his permit was given, that Nolan ought not to 
come. But these papers all show a weak man, con¬ 
scious that his superiors will be displeased by what he 
has already done, and hoping against hope that some¬ 
thing may turn up so that no harm may come of it. 

Governor Salcedo, of whom the reader will hear 
again, was the evil spirit of the Spanish administration 
of these regions, as the worthless “ Prince of Peace ” 
was its evil spirit at home. 

General Salcedo was the governor who had ex¬ 
pressed the wish, cited in an earlier chapter, that he 
could even prevent the birds from crossing from Lou¬ 
isiana into Texas. He was a faithful disciple of the 
extremest views of King Philip. While the local 
governor of Coahuila, and the commandant at San 
Antonio, both of them intelligent men, saw without 
uneasiness an occasional traveller from Natchitoches, 
or Philip Nolan proposing to go to Orleans, — Sal¬ 
cedo raved when he heard, of such obliquity or care¬ 
lessness. If they had told him that the primate of 
Mont El Rey, the beloved Bishop Don Dio Primero, 
had extended his episcopal visitation as far as Natchi¬ 
toches, he would have been beside himself with 
indignation. “What devils should take the bishop 
so far?” And, when they told him that the bishop 


150 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

went to fight the Devil, he expressed the wish that 
his holiness would leave as many devils as he could 
to harry those damnable French and the more dam¬ 
nable Americanos beyond them. Ah me! if Don 
Salcedo had been permitted to live to see the day, 
forty years later, when Sam Houston’s men charged 
on poor Santa Anna’s lines at San Jacinto, screaming, 
“ Remember the Alamo! ” he would have said that 
none of his black portents were too black, and none 
of his prophecies of evil gloomy enough. He would 
have said that he was the Cassandra who could not 
avert the future of Texas and Coahuila. 

De Nava had seen no danger in permitting poor 
Philip Nolan to drive a few horses, more or less, 
across the frontier of Texas into the king’s colony of 
Louisiana. If the horses had gone there at their 
own will, as doubtless thousands of horses did yearly, 
quien sabe ? and what harm? If Philip Nolan chose 
to come to San Antonio, and spend there a little 
Orleans money in his outfit for such an expedition; 
if he hired for good dollars a handful of Spanish 
hunters to go with him, — what harm? said Don 
Pedro de Navo. And so he gave Philip Nolan the 
passport and permission aforesaid. 

But the authorities in the city of Mexico, and those 
in the city of Madrid, did not know Philip Nolan, 
and did not understand such reasoning. The only 
Philip they chose to remember in the business was 
that Most Gracious and Very Catholic Philip, Lord 
of both Indies, who was good at burning heretics. 
It was certain that he would have had no horse-hunt¬ 
ing in his domains but by loyal, God-fearing subjects 


or, Show your Passports 151 

of his own. And if De Nava and those lax and good- 
natured men, the governors of the eastern provinces 
of Coahuila and Texas, had assented to such heretical 
horse-hunting, it was time for them to know who was 
master in these deserts; and the orders should pro¬ 
ceed “ from these headquarters.” And if that broken- 
down old fool Casa Calvo, away in that bastard 
province of Louisiana, which was neither one thing 
nor another, — neither colony nor foreign state, — if 
he chose to go to sleep while people invade us, why, 
we must be all the more watchful! 

By some wretched accident, as we must suppose, 
some account of Nolan’s plans, enormously exagger¬ 
ated, seems to have come even to the city of Mexico. 
The traditions are that Mordecai Richards,— the 
same Richards whom we have already introduced to 
our readers, — after he had engaged in Nolan’s ser¬ 
vice, sent traitorous information to some Spanish 
authority, of the plan of the expedition and of its 
probable route. Be this as it may, Spanish governors 
of the suspicious race were far too much excited then 
to receive such news with satisfaction. Old John 
Adams’s messages about the mouth of the Missis¬ 
sippi 1 had not been very pacific. Everybody knew, 
what everybody has long since forgotten, that he had 
half his army on that stream, and fleets of flatboats 
at every post, which were waiting only for the time 
when he should say “ Go,” and his army would 
pounce upon Orleans. Nobody could say at what 
moment European combinations might make this step 
feasible, without the least danger that the “ Prince of 

1 Not Harrod’s John. Adams, but President John, 



152 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

Peace/' the commander-in-chief of the armies of King 
Charles, should strike any return blow. “ Hunting 
horses, forsooth! ” said Don Nemisio de Salcedo: 
“ are we fools to have such stories told to us? It is 
an army of these giants of Kentuckianos; they must 
be driven back before it is too late.” And poor 
Governor De Nava unwillingly enough had to “ take 
the back track,” and act as if he thought so too. 

His military force was not large. In times of 
absolute peace, seeing no foreign army was within 
five hundred miles of Chihuahua, the garrison of that 
city was usually not more than two or three hundred 
men. But in this terrible exigency, with the Ken¬ 
tuckianos mustering in force on his distant border, 
De Nava withheld every unnecessary band that would 
otherwise have gone after Apaches or Comanches, 
refused all leaves of absence and furloughs, made his 
most of the loyalty of the military academy, and 
against poor Phil Nolan, fearing nothing in his corral, 
was able to equip an army of a hundred and fifty men. 

Military men, whose judgment is second to none, 
assure us that there was never better material for an 
army than the Mexican soldier of that day. This 
force of dragoons were all of them men who had seen 
service against the mounted Indians. Each man had 
a little bag of parched corn-meal and sugar, the 
common equipage of the hunters of those regions. 
Travellers of to-day, solicited in palace-cars to buy 
sugared parched-corn, do not know, perhaps, that 
this is the food of pioneers in front of Apaches. 
Besides this, a. paternal government provided good 
wheat biscuit and shaved dry meat, which they ate 


or. Show your Passports 153 

with enormous quantities of red pepper. With such 
outfit the troop would ride cheerily all day, taking 
no meal excepting at the encampment at night; and, 
if any man were hungry in the day, he bit a piece of 
biscuit, or drank some water with his corn-meal and 
sugar stirred into it. 

After orders and additional orders which need not 
be named, the little army assembled in the square in 
front of the cathedral. It was to march against the 
heretics : that was all they knew. A priest came out 
with holy water, to bless the colors. Every man had 
been confessed; and every man, as he shook himself 
into his saddle, understood that, whatever befell, he 
had a very considerable abatement made from the 
unpleasantness of purgatory, because he was on this 
holy errand. As they were on special service, not 
against Indians but whites, the lances which they 
carried on the prairies were taken away. But every 
man had a carbine slung in front of his saddle, a 
heavy horse-pistol on each side, and below the car¬ 
bine the shield, which was still in use, even in this 
century, to ward off arrows. It was made of triple 
sole-leather. It was round, and two feet in diameter. 
The officers carried oval shields bending on both 
sides, and in elegant blazonry displayed the arms of 
the king or of Spain, with other devices. So that it 
would have been easy to imagine that Fernando del 
Soto had risen from his grave, and that this was a party 
of the cavaliers of chivalry who were starting against 
poor Nolan and his fifteen horse-hunters in buckskin. 

The governor, with the officers of his staff, in full 
uniform, had assisted at the sacred ceremonials in the 




154 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

church. The men marched out and mounted. The 
governor, standing on the steps of the cathedral, gave 
his hand to the commander of the party. 

“ May God preserve you many years! ” he said. 

“ May God preserve your Excellency! ” 

“ Death to the savage heretics ! ” said the governor. 
“ Death to the invaders ! ” said Colonel Muzquiz, 
now in the saddle. Then turning to his men, he 
waved his hand, and cried, “ Long live the king! ” 
“Long live the king! ” they answered cheerily. 
“Forward, march! ” A hand kissed to a lady — 
and the troop was gone ! 


CHAPTER XII 

“ LOVE WAITS AND WEEPS ” 

“The stranger viewed the shore around : 

’T was all so close with copsewood bound, 

Nor track nor pathway might declare 
That human foot frequented there.” 

Lady of the Lake . 

The little camp which Harrod had formed on the 
Little Brassos was not much more than a hundred 
miles below the corral in which, some weeks later, 
Nolan wrote his merry letter to the ladies. Now that 
farms and villages spot the country between, — nay, 
when it is even vexed by railroad lines and telegraphs, 
— now that this poor little story is perhaps to be 
scanned even upon the spot by those familiar with 
every locality, — it is impossible to bear in mind that 
then the region between was all untrodden even by 


or, Show your Passports 155 

savages, and that, had Harrod and the ladies loitered 
at their camp till Nolan arrived at his, they would 
still be as widely parted as if they were living on two 
continents to-day. 

The disappearance of poor little Inez was not 
noticed in the camp till she had been away nearly an 
hour, — indeed, just as the sun was going down. 
Harrod had told her that he would join her on the 
knoll, and had hurried his necessary inspection, that 
he might have the pleasure of sitting by her, talking 
with her, and watching her at her work. But, when 
he turned to walk up to her, he saw that she was no 
longer there; and, seeing also that the curtain in 
front of her tent was closed, he supposed, without 
another thought, that she had returned from the hill¬ 
side, and was again in her tent with Eunice. A little 
impatiently he walked to and fro, watching the curtain 
door from time to time, in the hope that she would 
appear. But, as the reader knows, she did not 
appear. Yet it was not till her aunt came forth fresh 
from a late siesta, in answer to Ransom’s call to din¬ 
ner; that Harrod learned, to his dismay, that Inez 
was not with her. If he felt an instant’s anxiety, he 
concealed it. He only said,— 

“ How provoking! I have been waiting for her 
because she said she would make a sketch from the 
knoll here; and now she must be at work somewhere 
all alone.” 

“ She is a careless child,” said Eunice, “ to have 
gone away from us into this evening air without her 
shawl. But no: she has taken that. Still she ought 
to be here.” 





156 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

But Harrod needed no quickening, and had already 
run up the hill to call her. 

Of course he did not find her. He did find the 
note-book and the sketch-book, and the open box of 
colors. Anxious now, indeed, but very unwilling to 
make Eunice anxious, he ran down to the water’s 
edge, calling as loudly as he dared, if he were not to 
be heard at the camp, but hearing no answer. He 
came down to the very point where the cottonwood 
tree had fallen; and he was too good a woodsman 
not to notice at once the fresh trail of the panther 
and the cubs. He found as well tupelo leaves and 
bay leaves, which he felt sure Inez had broken from 
their stems. Had the girl been frightened by the 
beast, and lost herself above or below in the swamp? 

Or had she, — horrid thought, which he would not 
acknowledge to himself!—had she ignorantly taken 
refuge on the fallen cottonwood Ixree, — the worst pos¬ 
sible refuge she could have chosen? had she crept out 
upon it, and fallen into the deep water of the bayou? 

He would not permit himself to entertain a thought 
so horrible. But he knew that a wretched half-hour 
— nay, nearly an hour — had sped since he spoke 
with her; and what worlds of misery can be crowded 
into an hour ! He ran out upon the tree, and found at 
once the traces of the girl’s lair there. He found the 
places where she had broken the branches. He 
guessed, and guessed rightly, where she had 
crouched. He found the very twig from which she 
had twisted the bright tupelo. And he looked back 
through the little vista to the shore, and could see 
how she saw the beasts standing by the water. He 


or, Show your Passports 157 

imagined the whole position; and he had only the 
i wretched comfort, that, if she had fallen, it must be 
that some rag of her clothing, or some bit of broken 
branch below, would have told the tale. No such 
token was there; that is, it was not certain that she 
had fallen, and given one scream of agony unheard 
before the whole was over. 

He must go back to camp, however unwillingly. 
He studied the trail with such agony, even, as he had 
not felt before. He followed down the side track which 
Inez had followed for a dozen yards, but then was sure 
that he was wasting precious daylight. He fairly ran 
back to camp, — only careful to disturb by his footfall 
no trace which was now upon weed or leaf; and when 
he came near enough he had to walk as if not too eager. 

‘‘Has she come home?” said he, with well-acted 
calmness. 

“ You have not found her? Dear, dear child, where 
is she?” And in an instant Eunice’s eagerness and 
Harrod’s was communicated to the whole camp. He 
showed the only traces he had found. He told of the 
open color-box and drawing-book; and Eunice instantly 
supplied the clew which Harrod had not held before. 

“ She went down to fill her water-bottle. Did you 
find that there, — a little cup of porcelain?” 

No, Harrod had not seen that: he knew he should 
have seen it. And at this moment Ransom brought 
in all these sad waifs, and the white cup was not 
among them. Harrod begged the poor lady not to 
be distressed : the fire of a rifle would call the girl in. 
But Eunice of course went with him; and then even 
her eye detected instantly what he had refrained from 


158 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

describing to her, — the heavy footprints of the 
panther. 

“What is that? ” she cried; and Harrod had to 
tell her. 

In an instant she leaped to his conclusion, that the 
child had taken refuge somewhere from the fear of 
this beast, and in an instant more, knowing what she 
should have done herself, knowing how steady of 
head and how firm of foot Inez was, she said,— 

“ She ran out on that cottonwood tree, Mr. Harrod. 
Look there, — and there, — and there, — she broke 
the bark away with her feet! My child ! my child ! 
has she fallen into the stream ? ” 

Now it was Harrod’s turn to explain that this was 
impossible. He confessed to the discovery of the 
tupelo leaves. Inez had been on the log. But she 
had not fallen, he said, lying stoutly. There was no 
such wreck of broken branches as her fall would 
have made. And, before he was half done, the sug¬ 
gestion had been enough. Two of the men were 
in the.water. It was deep, alas! it was over their 
heads. But the men had no fear. They went under 
again and again; they followed the stream down its 
sluggish current. So far as their determined guess 
was worth anything, Inez’s body was not there. 

In the mean while every man of them had his 
theory. The water terror held to Eunice, though 
she said nothing of it. The men believed generally 
that those infernal Apaches had been on their trail 
ever since they left the fort; that they wanted per¬ 
haps to regain White Hawk, or perhaps thought 
they would take another prisoner in her place. 


or, Show your Passports 159 

This was the first chance that had been open 
to them, and they had pounced here. This was 
the theory which they freely communicated to 
each other and to Ransom. To Eunice in person, 
when she spoke to one or another, in the hurried 
preparations for a search, they kept up a steady and 
senseless lie, such as it is the custom of ignorant men 
to utter to women whom they would encourage. 
The girl had missed the turn by the bay-trees; or 
she had gone up the stream looking for posies. It 
would not be fifteen minutes before they had her 
“ back to camp ” again. Such were the honeyed 
words with which they hoped to reassure the 
agonized woman, even while they charged their 
rifles, or fastened tighter their moccasins, as if for 
war. Of course she was not deceived for an instant. 
For herself, while they would let her stay by the 
water-side, she was pressing through one and another 
quagmire to the edge of the cove in different places. 
But at last, as his several little parties of quest ar¬ 
ranged themselves, Harrod compelled her to return. 
As she turned up from the stream, one of the negroes 
came up to her, wet from the water. He gave her 
the little porcelain cup, which had lodged on a tangle 
of sedge just below the cottonwood tree. Strange 
that no one should have noticed it before! 

Every instant thus far, as the reader knows, had 
been wasted time. Perhaps it was no one’s fault,— 
nay, certainly it was no one’s fault, — for every one 
had “ done the best his circumstance allowed.” For 
all that, it had been all wasted time. Had Harrod 
fired a rifle the moment he first missed Inez, with 


160 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

half an hour of daylight still, and with the certainty 
that she would have heard the shot, and could have 
seen her way toward him, all would have been well. 
But Harrod had, and should have had, the terror lest 
he should alarm Eunice unduly; and, in trying to 
save her, he really lost his object. At the stream, 
again, minutes of daylight passed quicker than any 
one could believe, in this scanning of the trail, and 
plunging into the water. The shouts — even the united 
shouts of the party — did not tell on the night air as 
the sharp crack of a rifle would have done. Worst of 
all, in losing daylight, they were losing everything; and 
this, when it was too late, Harrod felt only too well. 

Considering what he knew, and the impressions he 
was under, his dispositions, which were prompt, were 
well planned and soldierly. It is but fair to say this, 
though they were in fact wholly wrong. Yielding 
to the belief, for which he had only too good reason, 
that the Apaches were on the trail, and had made a 
push to secure their captive again, Harrod bade the 
best soldiers of his little party join him for a hasty 
dash back on the great trail, in the hope that traces 
of them might be found, and that they could be over¬ 
taken even now, before it was wholly dark. One thing 
was certain,— that, if they had pounced on their 
victim, they had turned promptly. They had not been 
seen nor suspected at the camp itself, by their trail. 

Silently, and without Eunice’s knowledge, he bade 
Richards work southward, and Harry, the negro boy 
who had brought in the water-bottle, work north¬ 
ward, along the edges of the bayou. If there were — 
anything — there, they must find it, so long as light 


or, Show your Passports 161 

lasted. And they were to be in no haste to return. 
“ Do not let me see you before midnight. The moon 
will be up by and by. Stay while you can see the 
hand before your face.” 

He should have given rifles to both of them. 
Richards, in fact, took his; but the negro Harry, as 
was supposed in the fond theory of those times, had 
never carried a gun, and he went with no weapon 
of sound but his jolly “haw-haw-haw” and his 
vigorous call. Once more here was a mistake. 
Harry’s rifle-shot, had he had any rifle to fire, 
would have brought Inez in even then. 

Meanwhile Ransom led Eunice back to the camp¬ 
fire ; and, when his arrangements by the bayou were 
made, Harrod hastily followed. His first question 
was for the White Hawk; but where she was, no one 
knew. Two of the men thought she had been with 
Miss Perry; but this, Eunice denied. Ransom was 
sure that she came to him, and pointed to the sky, 
while he was carrying in the dinner. But Harrod 
doubted this, and the old man’s story was confused. 
Were the girls together? Had the same enemy 
pounced on both? Harrod tried to think so, and 
to make Eunice think so. But Eunice did not think 
so. She thought only of the broken bit of tupelo, 
and of this little white cup which she still clutched in 
her hand. From the first moment Eunice had known 
what would have happened to her, had that beast 
driven her out over the water. And from the first 
moment one thought, one question, had overwhelmed 
her, “ What shall I say to him, to tell him that I let 
his darling go, for one instant^ from my eye?” 
n 



162 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Then Harrod told Ransom that he must stay with 
Miss Eunice while they were gone. 

Ransom said bluntly, that he would be hanged if 
he would: Miss Inez was not far away, and he would 
find her before the whole crew on ’em saw anything 
on her. 

But Harrod called him away from the throng. 

“ Ransom, listen to me,” he said. “ If Miss Perry 
is left alone here, she will go crazy. If you leave 
her, there is no one who can say one word to her all 
the time we are gone. I hope and believe that we 
will have Miss Inez back before an hour; but all that 
hour she has got to sit by the fire here. You do not 
mean to have me stay with her; and I am sure you 
do not want me to leave her with one of those 
* niggers.’ ” 

Harrod for once humored the old man, by adopting 
the last word from his vocabulary. 

“You’re right, Mr. Harrod; I’d better stay. ’N’ 
I ’ll bet ten dollars, now, Miss Inez ’ll be the first one 
to come in to the fire, while you’s lookin’ after her. 
’T ain’t the fust time I’ve known her off after dark 
alone.” 

“ God grant it! ” said Harrod; and so the old man 
stayed. 

But Harrod had not revealed, either to Eunice or 
to Ransom, the ground for anxiety which had the 
most to do with his determinations and dispositions. 
In the hasty examination of the trail which he made 
when he first searched for the girl, and afterwards 
when he, with Richards and King, — better woods¬ 
men than he, — examined the path which they sup- 


or, Show your Passports 163 

posed the girl had taken, and the well-marked spot 
at the shore of the bayou, where the beasts came to 
water, they had found no print of Inez’s foot; but 
they had found perfectly defined marks, which no 
effort had been made to conceal, of an Indian’s foot¬ 
print. Harrod tried to think it was White Hawk’s, 
and pointed to Richards the smallness of the moc¬ 
casin, and a certain peculiarity of tread which he 
said was hers. Richards, on the other hand, believed 
that it was the mark of an Indian boy whom he 
described; that he had been close behind Inez, and 
had been trying, only too successfully, to obliterate 
every footstep. With more light, of course, there 
might have been more chance to follow these indica¬ 
tions; but, where the regular trail of the brutes 
coming to water had broken the bushes, they led up 
less successfully; and the indications all agreed that, 
if the Apaches were to be found at all, it was by the 
prompt push which they were now essaying. 

They all sprang to saddle; and even Harrod tried 
to give cheerfulness which he did not feel, by cry¬ 
ing,— 

“ They have more than an hour’s start of us, and 
they will ride like the wind. I will send back when 
1 strike the trail; but you must not expect us before 
midnight.” And so they were gone. 

Poor Eunice Perry sat alone by the camp-fire. 
Not two hours ago she had congratulated herself, and 
had let Inez, dear child, congratulate her, because, 
at the Brassos River, more than half, and by far the 
worst half, of their bold enterprise was over,—over, 
and well over. And now, one wretched hour, in 


164 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

which she had been more careless than she could 
believe, and all was night and horror. Could she be 
the same living being that she was this afternoon? 
She looked in the embers, and saw them fade away, 
almost careless to renew the fire. What was there to 
renew it for? 

Ransom, with the true chivalry of genuine feeling, 
left her wholly to herself for all this first agony of 
brooding. When he appeared, it was to put dry 
wood on the coals. 

“ She’ll be cold when she comes in. Night’s cold. 
She did n’t know she’d be gone so long.” This was 
in a soliloquy, addressed only to the embers. 

Then he turned bravely to Eunice, and, bringing 
up another camp-stool close to where she sat, he 
placed upon it the little silver salver, which he usually 
kept hid away in his own pack, where he reserved it 
for what he regarded as the state occasions of the 
journey. 

“Drink some claret, Miss Eunice; good for you; 
keep off the night air. Some o’ your brother’s own 
private bin, what he keeps for himself and ye mother, 
if she’d ever come to see him. I told him to give 
me the key when he went away; told him you might 
need some o’ the wine; and he gin it to me. Brought 
a few bottles along with me. Knew they would n’t 
be no good wine nowhere ef you should git chilled. 
Told him to give me the key; his own bin. Better 
drink some claret, Miss Eunice.” 

He had warmed water, had mixed his sangaree as 
carefully as if they had all been at the plantation, had 
remembered every fancy of Eunice’s in concocting 



or, Show your Passports 165 

it, grating nutmeg upon it from her own silver grater, 
which lay in his stores, much as her brother’s silver 
waiter did. And this was brought to her in her 
silver cup, as she sat there in the darkness in the wil¬ 
derness, with her life darker than the night. Eunice 
was wretched; but, in her wretchedness, she appre¬ 
ciated the faithful creature’s care; and, to please 
him, she made an effort to drink something, and sat 
with the goblet in her hand. 

“ It is very good, Ransom: it is just what I want; 
and you are very kind to think of it.” 

Ransom leaned over to change the way in which the 
sticks lay across the fire. Then he began again, — 

“Jest like her mother, she is. Don’t ye remember 
night her mother scared us all jest so? Got lost jest 
as Miss Inez has, and ye brother was half crazy. No, 
ye don’t remember: ye never see her. Ye brother was 
half crazy, he was. Her mother got lost jest as Miss 
Inez has; scared all on us jest so. She’s jest like her 
mother, Miss Inez is. I said so to Mr. Harrod only 
yesterday.” 

Eunice was too dead to try to answer him; and, 
without answer, the old man went on in a moment,— 

“ We wos out on the plantation. It wos in the fall, 
jest as it is now. It wos the fust year after ye brother 
bought this place; did n’t have no such good place on 
the river before: had the old place hired of Walker. 

“After he bought this place, cos she liked it,— 
two years afore this one was born, — it wos in the 
fall, jest as it is now — 

“ I’d sent all the niggers to bed, I had, V wos jest 
lookin’ ’round ’fore I locked up, w’en ye brother 


166 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

come up behind me, white as a sheet, h'e wos. ‘ Ran¬ 
som,’ says he, ‘ where’s ye missus? ’ 

“ Scared me awfully, he did, Miss Eunice. I did n’t 
know more ’n’ the dead where she wos ; ’n’ I said, says 
I, ‘Isn’t she in her own room?’ — ‘Ransom,’ says 
he, ‘ she is n’t in any room in the house; ’n’ none on 
’em seen her,’ says he, ‘ since she had a cup o’ tea 
sent to her in the settin’-room,’ says he ; ‘ ’n’ it was n’t 
dark then,’ says he. 

“’N’ none on’em knew where she wos or where 
she’d gone. Well, Miss Eunice, they all loved her, 
them darkies did, jest as these niggers, all on ’em, 
loves this one; and, w’en I went round to ask ’em 
where she wos, they run this way an’ that way, and 
none on 'em found her. ’N’ in an hour she come in 
all right: got lost down on the levee, — went wrong 
way ’n’ got lost; had been down to see how old 
Chloe’s baby was, ’n’ got lost cornin’ home. Wos n’t 
scared herself one bit, — never was scared, — wos n’t 
scared at nothin’. Miss Inez just like her mother.” 

Now there was a long pause; but Eunice did not 
want to discourage him, though she knew he would 
not encourage her. 

“Tell me more about her mother, Ransom.” 

“ Woll, Miss Eunice, ye know how handsome she 
wos. That ’ere picter hangs in the salon ain’t half 
handsome enough for her. Painted in Paris it wos, 
fust time they went over: ain’t half handsome enough 
for her. Miss Inez is more like her, she is. 

“ She wos real good to ’em all, she wos, ma’am. 
She wos quiet like, not like the French ladies; ’n’ 
when they come and see her, they knowed she wos 


or. Show your Passports 167 

more of a lady ’n’ they wos, ’n’ they did n’t care to 
see her much, ’n’ she did n’t care to see them much. 
But she wos good to ’em all. Wos good to the nig¬ 
gers : all the niggers liked her. 

“ Took on a good deal, and wos all broke down, 
when she come from the Havannah to this place. 
Kissed this one, Dolores here, that we’s goin’ to 
see, — kissed her twenty times; ’n’ Dolores says to 
me, says she, — that’s this one, — she says, says she, 
in her funny Spanish way, ‘ Ransom, take care of her 
ev’ry day and ev’ry night; ’n’, Ransom, when you 
bring her back to me,’ says she, ‘ I ’ll give you a 
gold doubloon,’ says she. ’N’ she laughed, ’n’ I 
laughed, ’n’ we made this one laugh, — Miss Inez’s 
mother. She did not like to come away, ’n’ took on 
a good deal.” 

Another pause, in which Ransom wistfully contem¬ 
plated the sky. 

“ Took her to ride myself, I did, ev’ry time, after 
this one was born,— I did. Coachman didn’t know 
nothin’. Poor crittur, ye brother got rid on him 
afterward. No: he died. I drove the kerridge my¬ 
self, I did, after this one was born. She was dread¬ 
ful pleased with her baby, cos it wos a gal, ’n’ she 
wanted a gal, ’n’ she took it to ride ev’ry day; ’n’ she 
says to me, * Ransom,’ says she, ‘ we must make this 
a Yankee baby, like her father,’ says she. She says, 
says she, ‘ Ransom, next spring,’ says she, ‘ we will 
carry the baby to Boston,’ says she, ‘ ’n’ show ’em 
what nice babies we have down here in Orleans,’ says 
she. ’N’ she says to me, says she one day, when she 
had had a bad turn o’ coughin’, ‘ Ransom,’ says she. 



168 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

* you ’ll take as nice care of her as ye do of me/ says 
she; ‘ won’t you, Ransom?’ says she.” 

“And you said you would, Ransom, I’m sure,” 
said Eunice kindly, seeing that the old man would 
say no more. 

“ Guess I did, ma’am. She need n’t said nothin’. 
Never thought o’ doin’ nothin’ else. Knew none on 
’em did n’t know nothin’ ’cept ye brother till you 
come down, ma’am. It was a hard year, ma’am, 
before you come down. Did n’t none on ’em know 
nothin’ ’cept ye brother.” 

Eunice was heard to say afterward that the implied 
compliment in these words was the greatest praise 
she had ever received from human lips; but at the 
time she was too wretched to be amused. 

There was not now a long time to wait, however, 
before they could hear the rattle of hoofs upon the 
road they had been following all day. 

It was Harrod’s first messenger, the least compe¬ 
tent negro in his train. He had sent him back to 
relieve Eunice as far as might be with this line, 
hurriedly written on a scrap of brown paper: — 

“We have found the rascals’ trail — very warm. I write 
this by their own fire. H.” 

The man said that they came upon the fire still 
blazing, about three miles from camp. King and 
Adams and Captain Harrod dismounted, studied the 
trail by the light of burning brands, and were 
satisfied that the camp had been made by Indians, 
who had followed our travellers along on the trail, and 
now had turned suddenly. King had said it was not 


or, Show your Passports 169 

a large party; and Captain Harrod had only taken a 
moment to write what he had sent to Miss Eunice, 
before they were all in the saddle again and in 
pursuit. 

So far so good. And now must begin another 
desperate pull at that wait-wait-wait, in which one’s 
heart’s blood drops out most surely, if most slowly. 

Old Ransom tended his fire more sedulously than 
ever, and made it larger and larger. 

“ She ’ll be all chilled when she comes in,” said he 
again, by way of explanation. But this was not 
his only reason. He bade Louis go down to the 
water’s edge, and bring up to him wet bark, and 
bits of floating wood. He sent the man again and 
again on this errand; and, as fast as his fire would 
well bear it, he thrust the wet sticks into the embers 
and under the logs. The column of steam, mingling 
with the smoke, rose high into the murky sky; and 
the light from the blaze below gave to it ghastly 
forms as it curled on one side or the other in occa¬ 
sional puffs of wind. 

Tired and heart-sick, Eunice lay back on her 
couch, with her tent-door opened, and watched the 
wayward column. Even in her agony some sickly 
remembrance of Eastern genii came over her; and 
she knew that the wretched wish passed her, that 
she might wake up to find that this was all a phan¬ 
tasm, a fairy tale, or a dream. 

So another hour crawled by. Then came a sound 
of crackling twigs; and poor Eunice sprang to her 
feet again, only to meet the face of the negro Harry, 
returning from his tour of duty. He had worked up 


170 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

the stream, as he had been directed; he had tried 
every access to the water. He said he had screamed 
and called and whooped, but heard nothing but 
owls. The man was as fearless of the night or 
of loneliness as any plantation slave used to the 
open sky. But he had thought, and rightly enough, 
that his duty for the night was at an end when he 
had made a tramp longer than was possible to so 
frail a creature as Inez; and came back only to 
report failure. He was dragging with him a long 
bough for the fire; and it was the grating of this 
upon the ground which gave warning of his 
approach. 

Nothing for it, Eunice, but to lie down again, and 
watch that weird white column, and the black forms 
of the three men hovering about it. Not a footfall, not 
even the sighing of the trees: the night is so still! 
It would be less weird and terrible if anything would 
cry aloud. But all nature seems to be waiting too. 

A halloo from Richards — who comes stalking in, 
cross, wet, unsuccessful, and uncommunicative. 

“ No— see nothin’. Knew I should n’t see nothin’. 
All darned nonsense of the cappen’s sending me thar. 
Told him so w’en I started, that she had n’t gone that 
way, and I knew it as well as he did. Fired my rifle? 
Yes, fired every charge I had. Did n’t have but five, 
and fired ’em all. She did n’t hear ’em ; no, cos she 
was n’t there to hear ’em. Hain’t you got a chaw of 
tobacco, Ransom? or give a fellow somethin’ to 
drink. If you was as wet as I be, you’d think 
you wanted sunthin ! ” 

Wait on, Eunice, wait on. Go back to your lair, 


or, Show your Passports 171 

and lie upon your couch. Do not listen to Rich¬ 
ards’s grumbling: try to keep down these horrible 
imaginings of struggles in water, of struggles with 
1 Indians, of faintness and death of cold. “ Suffi¬ 
cient for the day is the evil thereof.” 

Yes: poor Eunice thinks all that out. “But 
is not this moment the very moment when my 
darling is dying, and I lying powerless here? Why 
did I not go with them?” 

“ T00-00 — too-oo — ” 

“Is that an owl?” 

“ Hanged if it’s an owl. Hark ! ” 

“ Whoo—whoo — whoo — whoo,” repeated rapidly 
twenty times; and then again, “ Whoo — whoo — 
whoo — whoo,” twenty times more, as rapidly. 

Ransom seized his gun, fired it in the air, and ran 
toward the sound. Eunice followed him, gazing out 
into the night. 

“Whoo — whoo — whoo — whoo,” more slowly; 
and then Ransom’s “ Hurrah! All right, ma’am. 
She ’s here,” through the darkness. 

And then, in one glad minute more, he had 
brought Inez in his arms; and her arms were around 
her aunt’s neck, as if nothing on earth should ever 
part them more. 

The White Hawk had brought her in. 

And now the White Hawk dragged her to the fire, 
pulled off the moccasins that were on her feet, and 
began chafing her feet, ankles, and legs, while Ran¬ 
som was trying to make her drink, and Eunice kneel¬ 
ing, oh, so happy in her anxiety, at the poor girl’s 
side. 



\J2 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER XIII 

NIGHT AND DAY 

e< The camp affords the hospitable rite, 

And pleased they sleep (the blessing of the night); 

But when Aurora, daughter of the dawn, 

With rosy lustre purpled o’er the lawn, 

Again they mount, the journey to renew.” 

Odyssey . 

With the first instant of relief, old Ransom bade 
Harry saddle the bay mare, which Ransom had never 
before been known to trust to any human being but 
himself. With an eager intensity which we need not 
try to set down in words, he bade him push the mare 
to her best, till he had overtaken the captain, and 
told him the lost was found. 

Meanwhile poor little Inez was only able to speak 
in little loving ejaculations to her aunt, to soothe her 
and to cry with her, to be cried with and to be soothed. 

“ Dear aunty, dear aunty, where did you think I 
was?” and — 

“ My darling, my darling, how could I lose sight of 
you? ” 

And the White Hawk — happy, strong, cheerful, 
and loving — was the one “ effective ” of the three. 

But Ransom had not chosen wrongly in his pre¬ 
vision for her return. “ Knew ye’d be cold w’en ye 
come in, Miss Inez; knew ye war n’t drowned, and 
war n’t gone far.” He had a buffalo-skin hanging 
warming, ready for her to lie upon. He brought a 




or, Show your Passports 173 

camp-stool for her head to rest upon, as she looked 
into the embers. And when Eunice was satisfied 
at last that no hair of her darling’s head was hurt; 
when she saw her fairly sipping and enjoying Ran¬ 
som’s jorum of claret; when at last he brought in 
triumph soup which he had in waiting somewhere, 
and the girl owned she was hungry, — why, then, 
Eunice, as she lay at her side, and fed her and fondled 
her, was perhaps the happiest creature, at that mo¬ 
ment, in the world. 

And when words came at last, and rational ques¬ 
tions and answers, Inez could tell but little which 
the reader does not already know; nor could they 
then learn much more from White Hawk, with lan¬ 
guage so limited as was theirs. 

“Panther? yes, horrid brute! I have seemed to 
see him all night since. When it was darkest, I won¬ 
dered if I did not see the yellow of those dreadful eyes. 

“Apaches? No, I saw no Indians, nor thought 
of them; only my darling ‘Ma-ry’ here;” and she 
turned to fondle the proud girl, who knew that she 
was to be fondled. “ O Ma-ry, my sweetheart, how I 
wish you knew what I am saying! Why, Eunice, 
when I thought it was my last prayer, when I asked 
the good God to comfort you and dear papa,” —here 
her voice choked, — “I could not help praying for 
dear ‘ Ma-ry.’ I could not help thinking of her poor 
mother, and the agony in which she carried this child 
along. And then, why, Eunice, it was not long after, 
that all of a sudden I was lying in her arms, and she 
was cooing to me and rubbing me; and I thought 
for a moment I was in bed at home, and it was you; 


174 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

and then I remembered again. And dear, aunty, 
what a blessing it was to know I was not alone! ” 

In truth, the brave girl had held resolute to her 
purpose. She would save her voice till, at the end 
of every fifty sentry turns, she would stop and give 
her war-whoop and other alarm-cry. Then she would 
keep herself awake by walking, walking, walking, 
though she were almost dead, till she had made fifty 
turns more; and then she would stop and scream 
again. How often she had done this, she did not 
know; Eunice could guess better than she. Nor did 
she know how it ended. She must have stumbled 
and fallen. She knew she walked at last very clum¬ 
sily and heavily: all else she knew was, as she said, 
that she came to herself lying on the ground, while 
White Hawk was rubbing her hands, and then her 
feet, and that White Hawk would say little tender 
things to her, — would say “ Ma-ry,” and would stop 
in her rubbing to kiss her; then, that White Hawk 
pulled off those horrid wet stockings and moccasins 
which she had been tramping in, and took from her 
own bosom a pair dry and strong, — “ oh, how good 
it felt, aunty! ”— and then, that White Hawk made 
her rest on her shoulder, and walk with her a little, 
till she thought she was tired, and then sat down with 
her, and would rub her, and talk to her again.” 

“ How in the world did she know the way?” 

“ Heaven knows ! She would stop and listen : she 
would put her ear to the ground and listen. At last 
she made me sit at the foot of a tree, while she 
climbed like a squirrel, aunty, to the very top; and 
then she came down, and she pointed, and after she 


or, Show your Passports 175 

pointed she worked always this way. She made this 
sign, aunty; and this must be the sign for ‘ fire.’ ” 

The girl brought her hands near her breast, half 
shut, till they touched each other, and then moved 
them quickly outward. Both of them turned to 
White Hawk, who was listening carefully; and they 
pointed to the embers, as Inez renewed the sign. 
White Hawk nodded and smiled, but repeated it, ex¬ 
tending her fingers, and separating her hands, as if in 
parody of the waving of flame. This part of the ges¬ 
ture poor Inez had not seen in the darkness. 

From the moment White Hawk had seen Ransom’s 
white and rosy column of smoke, it had been a mere 
question of time. By every loving art she had made 
the way easy for her charge. She would have lifted 
her, had Inez permitted. “ But, aunty, I could have 
walked miles. I was strong as a lion then.” 

Lion or lamb, after she was roasted as a jubilee ox 
might have been, she said, her two nurses dragged 
her to her tent and to bed. 

“It is too bad, aunty! I ought to thank dear Cap¬ 
tain Harrod, aad all of them. Such a goose as to 
turn night into day, and send them riding over the 
world! ” 

All the same they undressed her, and put her to 
bed; and such is youth in its omnipotence, whether 
to act, to suffer, or to sleep, that in five minutes the 
dear child was unconscious of cold, of darkness, or 
of terror. 

And Eunice did her best to resist the reaction 
which crept over her, oh, so sweetly! after her hours 
of terror. But she would start again and again, as 


176 Philip Nolan’s Friends'; 

she lay upon her couch. One instant she s&id to her¬ 
self, — 

“ Oh, yes, I am quite awake! I never was more 
wakeful. But what has happened to them ? Will they 
never be here?” And the next instant she would be 
bowing to the First Consul, as Mr. Perry presented her 
as his sister, and renewed his old acquaintance with 
Madame Josephine, once Beauharnais. Then she 
would start up from her couch and walk out to the 
fire, and Ransom would advise her to go back to her 
tent. At last, however, just when he, good fellow! 
would have had it (for his preparation of creature 
comforts for the scouting party was made on a larger 
scale, if on a coarser, than those for Miss Inez), the 
welcome tramp of rapid hoofs was heard; and in five 
minutes more Harrod swung himself from the saddle 
by the watch-fire, and was eagerly asking her for news. 

For himself, he had but little to tell. Since all was 
well at home, it would wait till breakfast. 

“What have you got for us now, Ransom? a little 
whiskey? Yes, that’s enough; that’s enough. The 
others are just behind.” 

Then, turning to Eunice,— 

“Yes, Miss Perry. All is well that ends well. I 
have said that to myself and aloud for this hour’s gal¬ 
lop.— Ransom! Ransom! don’t let those fools take 
her to water. Make Louis rub her dry.—Yes, Miss 
Perry, we found the rascals’ fire. God forgive me for 
calling them rascals ! They are saints in white, for all 
I know. But really, — this whiskey does go to the 
right place ! —but really, when you have been trying 
to ride down a crew of pirates for a couple of hours, 


or, Show your Passports 177 

it is hard to turn round and believe they were honest 
men. 

“ Yes, we found their fire; and, if I ever thanked 
God, it was then, Miss Perry. Though why, if they 
were after the girls, why they should have built a fire 
just there by that little wet prairie, I could not tell 
myself. Still there was the fire. Up till that moment, 
Miss Eunice, — up till that moment, — I believed she 
was stark and dead under the water of the bayou. I 
may as well tell you so now,” and he choked as he 
said it; and she pressed his hand, as if she would say 
she had been as sure of this as he. 

“ Yes, I thought that the painter there, or the In¬ 
dians, or both together, had driven her out on that 
infernal cottonwood log—I beg your pardon, Miss 
Eunice: I am sure the log has done me no harm; 
but I thought we were never to see her dear face 
again.” And he stopped, and wiped the tears from 
his eyes with the back of his hand. 

“ So I thanked God when I saw their fire, because 
that confirmed what all the rest of them said. And 
we got off our horses, and we could see the trail was 
warm : they went off in a hurry. Why they did not 
put their fire out, I did not know, more than why 
they lighted it. 

“If we could have made a stern chase, as Ransom 
would say, we would have overhauled them soon; 
but this I did not dare. King knew from what lie 
saw this morning how to take us round the edge of 
that wet prairie, — by a trail they had followed by 
mistake then; and he said we could head them as 
they travelled, at the sloo where we lunched, if you 
12 




178 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

remember. For we could see that they had one lame 
mule at least. They seemed to have but few beasts, 
anyway; and of course none of them was a match 
for Bet there, or for that Crow, the bay that King 
rides. So I took him with me, told the others to keep 
the main trail slowly; and sure enough, in an hour, 
more or less, King had me just where you and Miss 
Inez lay under that red-oak to-day. 

“And there we waited and waited; not long, not 
long. We could hear them grunting and paddling 
along, and beating the mule, till I stepped out, and 
struck an old fellow over the shoulder, and cocked 
my pistol. They do not know much, but they knew 
what that meant. They all stopped meek as mice, 
for they thought I was an army. 

“ But, good heavens ! there were but four of them ; 
three old men and a squaw, and these four miserable 
brutes. It was no war-party, that was clear. I could 
have talked to them if it were daylight; but now it 
was as much as ever I could see them, or they me. 
King understood none of their gibberish, nor I. I 
hoped perhaps Adams might; meanwhile I tied the 
old fellow hand and foot: he did not resist, none of 
them resisted. In a minute the others came up; and 
then we struck a light, and, after some trouble, made 
a fire. 

“ Then, when we could see, I began to talk to 
them in gestures; and now I can afford to laugh at 
it: then I was too anxious and too mad. 

“I went at the old man. You should have seen 
me. He said he could not answer because his hands 
were tied, which was reasonable. So I untied him, 


or, Show your Passports 179 

but told him I would blow his brains out if he tried 
to run away. At least, I think he knew I would. 

“ I asked him where the girls were. 

“ He said we had them with us. 

“ I told him he lied. 

“ He said I did. 

“ I asked him again where they were, and threat- 
ened him with the pistol. 

“ He said he knew nothing of the girl with the long 
feather, since she sat there with her back to the oak- 
tree, and mended the lacing of her shoe. 

“Only think, Miss Eunice, how the dogs watch 
us! 

“ As for White Hawk, he said he sold her to 
Father Andres for the lame mule he had been riding, 
and that he supposed Father Andres sold her to me; 
that he had not seen her since I mounted you ladies, 
and White Hawk went on in advance. He said they 
stayed and picked up what dinner the men had left, 
and ate it, as they had every day. 

“ I asked him why he left his fire. He said they 
were frightened. They knew we were in the saddle, 
and they were afraid, because they had stolen the 
blacksmith’s hammer and the ham-bones: so they 
mounted and fled. 

“ Well, you know, I thought this was an Indian’s 
lie, — a lie all full of truth. I told him so. I took 
him, and tied him to a tree, and I tied the other man 
and the big boy. The woman I did not tie: Miss 
Eunice, applaud me for that I believe you have a 
tender heart to the redskins; and I determined to 
wait till morning. But in half an hour I heard the 


i8o Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

rattle of the mare’s heels, and up came Harry to say 
that all was well.” 

“ And all’s well that ends well.” 

“ Yes, Ransom: no matter what it is. I did not 
know I should ever feel hungry again. 

“ But, dear Miss Perry, how thoughtless I am! 
For the love of Heaven, pray go into your tent, and 
go to sleep. How can we be grateful enough that 
she is safe?” 

Then he called her back. 

“ Stop one moment, Miss Perry: we are very near 
each other now. What may happen before morning, 
none of us know. I must say to you, therefore, now, 
what but for this I suppose I should not have dared 
to say to you, — that she is dearer to me than my 
life. If we had not found her, oh, Miss Perry, I 
should have died! I would have tried to do my 
duty by you, indeed; but my heart would have 
been broken. 

“Yes. I knew how eager you were, and how 
wretched. Pray understand that my wretchedness 
and my loss would have been the same as yours. 
Good-night! God bless her and you ! ” 

A revelation so abrupt startled Eunice, if it did not 
wholly surprise her. But she was too completely ex¬ 
hausted by her excitements of every kind even to try 
to think, or to try to answer. She did not so much 
as speak, as he turned away, and only bade him 
good-by by her kindly look and smile. 

It was late when they met at breakfast. Harrod 
would gladly have permitted a day’s halt after the 
fatigues of the night, but not here. They must make 


or, Show your Passports 181 

a part of the day’s march; and already all of the 
train which could be prepared was ready for a start. 
Inez appeared even later than the others; but she 
was ready dressed for travelling. The White Hawk 
welcomed her as fondly and proudly as if she were 
her mother, and had gained some right of property in 
her. Eunice was so fond and so happy, and Harrod 
said frankly that he did not dare to tell her how happy 
the good news made him when it came to him. 

“ Woe’s me,” said poor Inez, hardly able to keep 
from crying, “ Woe’s me, that, because I was a fool, 
brave men have had to ride, and fair women to 
watch ! You need none of you be afraid that I shall 
ever stray two inches from home again.” 

But, as she ate, Harrod drew from her, bit by bit, 
her own account of her wanderings. 

“ And to think,” said he, “ that this girl here knows 
how to follow a trail better than I do, and finds one 
that I have lost! I believe the flowers rise under 
your tread, Miss Inez; for on the soft ground yonder 
by the lick we could not find your foot-tread. Could 
it have been hers that frightened me so? ” 

Then he told her how they were sure they caught 
the traces of an Indian boy, and thought he had 
been stepping with his feet turned outward in her 
footprints. 

“And pray what did you think I wore, captain? 
I had taken off my shoes, and I was walking in the 
moccasins the Senora Trevino gave me at Nacog¬ 
doches.” 

“ And I did not know your footfall when I saw it, 
I will never call myself a woodsman again! ” 



182 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER XIV 

A PACKET OF LETTERS 

“ I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters.” 

Merry Wives of Windsor. 

But it is time that the reader should welcome the 
party of travellers, no longer enthusiastic about camp- 
life, to the hospitalities — wholly unlike anything 
Inez had ever seen before — of San Antonio de 
Bexar. 

The welcome of her dear aunt, of Major Barelo,— 
who held the rank of alfarez , which in these pages 
will be translated “major,” — indeed, one may say, 
of all the gentlemen and ladies of the garrison, had 
been most cordial. The energy of the march made 
it a matter of nine days’ wonder; and the young 
Spanish gentlemen thanked all gods and goddesses 
for the courage which had brought, by an adventure 
so bold, such charming additions to the circle of their 
society. Dona Maria Dolores was not disappointed 
in her niece; nor was she nearly so much terrified by 
this wild American sister-in-law as she had expected; 
and Inez found her aunt, ah! ten times more lovely 
than she had dared to suppose. 

But the impressions of both ladies will be best 
given by the transcript of three of their letters,— 
which have escaped the paper-mills of three-quarters 
of a century, — written about a week after their 
arrival. True, these letters were written with a pain- 


or. Show your Passports 183 

ful uncertainty lest they were to be inspected by 
some Spanish official. They were severely guarded, 
therefore, in anything which might convict Nolan or 
Harrod, or their humbler adherents. For the rest, 
they describe the position of the ladies sufficiently. 

Inez Perry to her Father. 

In my own Room, San Antonio de Bexar, 
Nov. 26, 1800. 

Dear, dear Papa, — Can you believe it? We are really 
here. See, I write you in my own room, which dear Aunt 
Dolores has arranged for me just as kindly as can be. I 
would not for the world tell her how funny it all is to me ; 
for she has done everything to make it French or American, 
or to please what are supposed to be my whims. But, if 
you saw it, you would laugh so, papa ! and so would Roland, 
if he is anything like you. 

I shall write Roland a letter, and it will go in the same 
cover with this. But he must not cry, as you used to say 
to me, if I write to you first of all. 

I have kept my journal very faithfully, as I said I would; 
and some day you shall see it. But not now, dear papa; 
for the general — Herrara, you know — is very kind to let 
this go at all, and it must be the smallest letter that I know 
how to make, and Roland’s too. 

I think you were wholly right about the journey, dear 
papa; and if we had it to do over again you would think 
that this was the way to do it, if you knew all that we have 
seen and all that we have enjoyed, and even if you knew all 
the inconveniences. It has been just as you said, that I 
have learned ever so many things which I should never have 
learned in any other way, and seen ever so much that I 
should never have seen in any other way. Dear papa, if 




184 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

you will keep it secret, and not tell Roland, — for I am 
dreadfully afraid of Roland, you know, — I will tell you 
that I do not think that I am near so much of a goose as I 
was when I left home. I hope you would say that your 
little girl is rather more of a woman. And I am as well, 
papa, as I can be. Eunice says I have gained flesh. We 
cannot find out, though we were all weighed yesterday in 
the great scales in the warehouse. But they weigh with 
fanegas and all sorts of things ; and nobody seems to know 
what they mean in good honest livres. I know I am stouter, 
because of the dresses, you know. There, pray do not read 
that to Roland. 

Aunt Eunice is writing, and she will tell you all the busi¬ 
ness, — the important business of the journey. She will 
explain why we changed the plans, and how it all happened. 
I know you will be very sorry that we had not Capt. P. all 
the way. I am sure I was. He was just as nice as ever, 
and as good as gold to me. If Roland is to be a soldier, I 
hope he will be just such a soldier. But then, I hope 
Roland is not to be a soldier. I hope he is to come home 
to me some day. Aunt Eunice will tell you whom we 
had to escort us instead of Capt. P. When you come 
home you will know how to thank him for his care of us. I 
only wish I knew when we are to see him or the captain 
again. Papa, if you or Roland had been with us, I do not 
think there was one thing you could have thought of which 
he did not think of and do, so bravely and so pleasantly and 
so tenderly. I knew he had sisters, and he said he had. I 
can always tell. I only hope they know that it is not every 
girl has such brothers. I have; but there are not many 
girls that do. Why, papa, the night I was lost, he — there ! 
I did not mean to tell you one word of my being lost, but 
it slipped out from the pen. That night he was in the 


or. Show your Passports 185 

saddle half the night, hunting for me. Perhaps you say 
j that was of course. And he tied up some Indians that 
he thought knew about me. Perhaps that was of course 
too. But what was not of course was this : that from that 
moment to this moment, he never said I was a fool, as I 
was. He never said if I had done this or that, it would 
have been better. He was perfectly lovely and gentlemanly 
about it all, always : papa, he was just like you. I wish I 
knew when we should see him again. He left yesterday, 
with only three men, to join the captain. I wish we could 
see him soon. When we are all at home again, in dear, 
dear Orleans, I shall coax you to let me ask his sister to 
spend the winter with us. There are two of them : one is 
s named Marion, — really after the Swamp-Fox, papa, — and 
the other is named Jane. Jane is the oldest. Is not 
Marion a pretty name ? 

But, papa, though there is only this scrap left, I want to 
tell you earnestly how much I want to take Ma-ry with 
us when you come home; how much I love her, and 
how necessary it is that she shall not stay here. Aunt 
Eunice says she will explain it all, and who Ma-ry is, and 
why I write her name so. She will tell you why it is so 
! necessary as I say. But, dear papa, only I can tell you how 
much, how very much, I want her. You see, I have a sister 
t now, and I do not want to lose her. And, papa, this is not 
the coaxing of a little girl: this is the real earnest wish of 
; your own Inez, now she has seen things as a woman sees 
; them. Do not laugh at that, dear papa: but think of it 
: carefully when you have read dear aunty’s letter, and think 
■ how you can manage to let me have Ma-ry till she finds her 
own home. Oh, dear ! what will happen to me when she 
finds it? 

Oh papa! why is not this sheet bigger? It was the 




i 86 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


biggest they had. 
you. 


Ever so much love to Roland, and all to 
From your own little 

Inez. 


Silas Perry read this letter aloud to his soldier son, 
as they sat together in their comfortable lodgings in 
Passy. And then Roland said, “ Now let me try and 
see how much the little witch explains to me of these 
mysteries. It is just as she says: she is afraid of me 
without wanting to be, and we shall find the words 
are longer, though I am afraid the letter will be 
shorter. We will fix all that up when I have been a 
week on the plantation.” 

Inez Perry to Roland Perry. 

San Antonio de Bexar, Nov. 27, 1800. 

My dear Brother, — You have not the slightest idea 
what sort of a place a Spanish city is, though you have been 
the subject of our gracious and catholic king ten years 
longer than I have. There are many beautiful situations 
here,' and some of the public edifices are as fine as any we 
have in Orleans; but it is the strangest place I ever saw. 


“ That is curious,” said Roland, stopping to keep 
his cigar alive, “ as she never saw any other place but 
Orleans. You see that I have the dignified letter, as 
I said. I shall be jealous of you if it keeps on so.” 

Then he continued his reading: — 

We have had a beautiful journey through a very interest¬ 
ing country. I am sure you would have enjoyed it; and 
as we spent three days at Nacogdoches, which is a garrison 
town, perhaps it would have been instructive in your pro- 


or. Show your Passports 187 

fession. But perhaps a French military student does not 
think much of Spanish officers. All I can say is, vve saw 
some very nice, gentlemanly men there, who danced very 
well; and we saw those horrid dances, the Fandango and 
Bolero. 

All the escorts say that we had a very fortunate journey 
across the wood-country and the prairies. I am told here 
that I have borne the fatigue very well. There was not a 
great deal of fatigue, though sometimes I was very tired. 
One night there was a Norther, — so Mons. Philippe called it. 

“Does she mean Nolan, by ‘Mons. Philippe?”’ 
said Roland, stopping himself again. “ I thought she 
said Nolan was not with them. There’s a blot here, 
where she wrote something else at first. Can the man 
have two names ? ” 

So Mons. Philippe calls it, but the people here call it 
Caribinera . What it is is a terrible tempest from the 
north, which tears everything to pieces, and is terribly 
cold. We were so cold that we needed all our wraps to 
make us comfortable, and Ransom had to build up the fire 
again. 

I am sure I shall enjoy my visit here. My aunt and 
Major Barelo are as kind as possible; and all the ladies in 
the garrison have been very thoughtful and attentive. But 
how glad I shall be to come home again, and meet you 
and papa ! 

Dear Roland, do not go into the army. 

“ What is this? Something more scratched out?” 
But he held it to the light. 

There is fighting enough to be done here, 




18 8 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ That is what Miss Een thinks, is it?” 

“ But she did not dare trust that to the post-office 
in Mexico. That is a prudent girl.” 

“ Is.that all?” said his father. 

“ Yes, all but this: ” 

Dear Roland, I do want to see you, and I love you always. 

Truly yours, Inez. 

“ I call that a nice letter, sir; and, on the whole, I 
will not change with you. Of course she has changed 
a hundred times as much as I have, and I cannot 
make out that she is anything but a baby. Dear 
Aunt Eunice will fill all blanks.” 

Eunice Perry to Silas Perry. 

San Antonio de Bexar, Nov. 26, 1800. 

My dear Brother, —We are safe here, and have a most 
cordial welcome. Having no chance to write by Orleans, I 
send this, through Gen. Herrara’s kindness, by the City of 
Mexico, whence there is a despatch-bag to some port in 
Europe. 

“ Roland, she thinks the letters were to be exam¬ 
ined on their way, and I believe this has been.” 

“ I am certain mine has been, sir. Here is the 
mark which shows what was copied from mine in 
some Mexican office, —this that poor little Een tried 
to scratch out, about fighting.” 

“ Much good may it do them! ” said his father, and 
continued reading his sister’s letter aloud: — 

Inez has borne her journey famously. Indeed, when we 
were well started, and were once used to the saddle, it was 
tedious, but nothing more. She lost herself one night, and 


Or, Show your Passports 189 

frightened me horribly; but no harm came of it. As for 
Indians, we saw but few. From the first post the Spanish 
officers furnished us escorts of troops on their return to this 
garrison. Perhaps that frightened away the Indians, as it 
certainly did /os Americanos . 

“ ‘ As it certainly did los Americanos .’ Roland, 
Phil Nolan found that his room was better than his 
company. He would never have left them if it were 
not better for them that he should leave. Eunice 
knew these letters were to be opened, and she has 
written for more eyes than mine.” 

When you see Mons. Philippe, you must express what I 
have tried to tell, — how much we value his constant and 
kind attention. 

“Who the dickens is Mons. Philippe? That I 
shall learn when the ‘Hamilton’ comes in.” 

We have brought with us a charming girl, who makes a 
dear companion for Inez, being, I suppose, about her age. 
She is an American girl, whom a Spanish priest found among 
the Apaches, and bought of them. From the first moment 
the two girls fancied each other, though at first neither 
could understand the other’s language. But now Mary has 
learned a great deal of English and a little Spanish, and 
dear little Inez is quite glib in Apache ! The girl’s name is 
Mary; she calls it Ma-ry, as if it were two words; it is the 
only word she remembers which her mother taught her. 

Inez wants to take her home; and, unless I hear from 
you that you object, I shall agree to this, unless some othei 
arrangement is made for sending her East. Dona Dolores 
agrees : the garrison is not a very good place for her. 

To tell you the truth, the regular lessons which Inez 




ipo Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

gives her, and the reading which the dear girl undertakes 
in books you bade her read, keeps them out of mis¬ 
chief for two or three hours every day. The ladies here 
do so little, and have so little to do in this dull Moor-like 
life, that this seems strange to them. But I encourage 
them both in it. They ride a good deal under dear old 
Ransom’s escort; and sometimes he drives them out in one 
of these solemn old carriages which I believe were inherited 
direct from Cortez. 

This is an interesting place, such as I suppose you have 
often seen, but as different from a French city, or from our 
French city, — do not let Roland laugh at me,—as that is 
from Squam Bay. Oh, do not think that we will be home¬ 
sick here. Doha Dolores is all that you described her to be, 
and as happy in her new plaything as she hoped to be, and 
deserved to be. She persuades herself that she sees Inez’s 
-"mother’s face in hers, and is sometimes startled by a tone 
of her voiced She delights the dear child, as you may sup¬ 
pose. There are several ladies here who are accomplished 
and agreeable. I do not know but you have heard the 
major speak of the families of Garcia, of Gonzales, and 
Trevino. Col. Trevino is now at Nacogdoches: he was 
very civil to us. 

We have found two governors here, — fortunately for us, 
for I believe neither of them strictly belongs here, Gen. 
Herrara is, as you know, a remarkable man: we are great 
friends. His wife is an English lady whom he married at 
Cadiz, and it is a great pleasure to me to see so much of her. 
He was in Philadelphia when Gen. Washington was presi¬ 
dent, and spoke to me at once of him. Of course we have 
been firm friends ever since that. He is governor, not of 
this province, but of New Leon, our next neighbor, and is 
very much beloved there. I hardly know why he resides 


or. Show your Passports 191 

so much here. Gov. Cordero, whose real seat of govern¬ 
ment is Monte-Clovez, is here a great deal, — for military- 
reasons, I suppose. He is a bachelor: the more is the 
pity. He is Spanish by birth, and every inch a soldier. 
Gov. Elquezebal you will remember. 

Young Walker is here from the military school. You 
remember his mother. He came at once to see me. 

But my paper is at an end, and I must let my pen run no 
longer. Give much love to my dear Roland. This letter 
is his as much as yours. 

Always your own loving sister, 

Eunice Perry. 

“ Governor Cordero is there for military reasons, 
Roland, and General Herrara is there also. What 
military reasons but that President John Adams has 
stirred up the magnificoes a little? But if I have 
sent our doves into a hawk’s nest, Roland, I do not 
know how we are to get them out again.” 

“ It is one comfort,” he added, after a pause, “ that 
there will be a good strip of land and water between 
General Herrara and General Wilkinson.” 

And the father and son resumed their cigars, and 
sat in silence. 

What Silas Perry meant by “ a good thick strip ” 
will appear from his own letter to Eunice, which shall 
be printed in the next chapter. He had written it as 
soon as possible after his arrival in Paris. It had 
crossed her letter on the ocean. Written under 
cover to his own house in Orleans, and sent by his 
own vessel, it spoke without hesitation on the topics, 
all-important, of which he wrote. 



Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


192 


CHAPTER XV 

COURTS AND CAMPS 

Well loved that splendid monarch aye 
The banquet and the song, 

The merry dance, traced fast and light, 

The maskers quaint, the pageant bright, 

The revel loud and long. 

Here to the harp did minstrels sing; 

There others touched a softer string; 

While some, in close recess apart, 

Courted the ladies of their heart, 

Nor courted them in vain. — Mawnion. 

OUR little history draws again upon these yellow files 
of ancient letters. 

Silas Perry to Eunice Perry. 

Passy, near Paris, Nov. 16, 1800. 

My dear Sister, — We have had a wonderful run. Look 
at the date, and wonder, when you know that I have been 
here a week. I have good news for you in every way. 
First, that our dear boy is well, — strong, manly, gentle¬ 
manly, — and not unwilling to come home. He thought 
I should not know him in his cadet uniform, as he stood 
waiting for me in the courtyard where the post-chaise 
brought me. But, Lord ! I should have known him in a 
million. Yet he is stronger, stouter, has the air militaire 
wonderfully; and they do not wear their hair as our officers 
do. This is my first great news. The second you would 
read in the gazettes, if you were not sure to read this first. 
It is, that France and America are firm friends again : no 
more captures at sea, no more mock war. This First 
Consul knows what he is about. He told his brother 


or, Show your Passports 193 

Joseph what to do, and he did it. On the 30th of Sep- 
» tember the treaty was signed : the right of search is all 
settled, and commerce is to be free on both sides. Had I 
known this on the 30th of September, I might not have 
come. For all that, I am glad I am here. 

Third bit of news ; and this is “ secret of secrets,” as our 
dear mother would have said. You may tell Inez; but 
swear her to secrecy. I have only told Turner and Pollock. 
We are no longer Spanish subjects ! We are French citi¬ 
zens,— citizens and citizenesses of the indivisible French 
Republic. Perhaps I do not translate citoyennes right; but 
that is what you and Inez are. Is not that news? 

I only knew this last night. There are not ten men in 
Paris who know it. But, by a secret article in a treaty 
made in Spain last month, this imbecile King of Spain has 
given all Louisiana back to France. There ! does not that 
make your hair stand on end? 

! Of course, dear Eunice, if there should be any breath of 
war between the two countries, your visit must end at once. 
Heaven knows when you will hear from me; but act 
promptly. Do not be caught among those Mexicans when 
the Dons are fighting the Monsieurs. But I think there 
will be no war before we are well home. When war comes 
I I am glad we are on the side that always wins. 

Roland will tell you in his letter in what scene of vanity 
I picked up my information. If I can I shall add more; 
but I must now sign myself, 

Your affectionate brother, 

Silas Perry. 

Roland Perry to Inez Perry. 

Passy, near Paris, Nov. 16, 1800. 

Dear little Sister, — Father has left me his letter to 
read and seal, and has bidden me give you all the par- 

13 







194 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

ticulars of his triumphs at court. I tell him that nobody has 
made such an impression as he, since Ben Franklin. It has 
all been very droll; and, when I see you, I can make you - 
understand it better than I can write it. To be brief, papa 
is what they call here “ un grand succes .” 

He says, and you say, that I have not written enough 
about how I spend my time. I can see that he is surprised 
at knowing the chances I have for good society. But it has 
'all come about simply enough. When I came here, M. 
Beauharnais, as you know, welcomed me as cordially as a 
man could; and, when there was an off-day at school, they 
made me at home there. Just as soon as Eugene entered 
at the Polytechnic — well, I knew the ways a little better 
than he did. As dear old Ransom used to say, “ I had the 
hang of the schoolhouse.” Anyway, he took to me, and I 
was always glad to help the boy. You see, they called him 
an American, because of his hither and mother: so, as the 
senior American in P Ecole, I had to thrash one or two 
fellows who were hard upon him. Now that he is one of 
the young heroes of Egypt, I have reason to be proud of 
my protigk. I only wish I had gone with them. Well, if 
I have not told you of every call I have made there, — I 
mean at his mother’s, — it is because it has been quite a 
matter of course in my life. When Eugene and the general 
were both away, there were many reasons why I should be 
glad to be of service to her; and she has never forgotten 
them. 

Well, when papa came, I told him that his first visit must 
be to Mme. Buonaparte at Malmaison; and he must thank 
her, if he meant to thank any one, for my happy life here. 
You know how papa would act. He said he was not going 
to pay court to First Consuls, and put on court dresses. 
Some fool had told him great lies about the state at 


or, Show your Passports 195 

Malmaison. I told him, if I did not know how to take my 
own father to see a friend of mine, I did not know any¬ 
thing. He was very funny. He asked if he need not be 
powdered. I told him, No. I told him to put on his best 
coat, and go as he would go to a wedding at Squam Bay. 

Inez, he was very handsome. He was perfectly dressed, 
— you know he would be, — and his hair, which is the least 
bit more gray than I remember it, was very distingue in the 
midst of all those heads of white powder. We drove out 
to Malmaison, and I can tell you we had a lovely time. I 
was as proud as I could be. There is not much fuss there, 
ever, about getting in; and with me, — well, they all know 
me, you know, — and the old ones have, since I was a boy. 
By good luck, Madame was alone (you know we say 
Madame now, without having our heads cut off). She was 
alone, and I presented papa. She was so pleased ! Inez, 
I cannot tell you how pleased she was. You see, she does 
not often see people of sense, who have any knowledge of 
the islands, or of her father and mother, or her husband’s 
friends. Then it was clear enough, in two minutes, that 
papa must have been of real service to Major Beauharnais 
and to her, which he had never told me of. He lent her 
money, perhaps, when she was poor, — or something. My 
dear Inez, she treated papa with a sort of welcome I have 
never seen her give to any human being. 

Well, right in the midst of this, who should come in but 
the Gen. Buonaparte himself, the First Consul, boots muddy, 
and face all alive ! He had ridden out from the Thuilleries. 
He looked a little amazed, — I thought a little mad. But 
Mme. Josephine has tact enough. “Mon ami," she said 
to him, “ here is an American, my oldest and best friend. 
I present to you Mons. Perry, — the best friend of the 
Vicomte, and but for whom I should never have been here. 




196 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

Mons. Perry, you had the right to be the godfather of 
Eug&ne.” 

Dear papa bowed, and gave the First Consul his hand, 
and said he hoped he was well. Was not that magnificent? 
Oh, Inez, it was ravishing to see him ! The consul was a 
little amazed, I think; but he is a man of immense pene¬ 
tration and immense sense. So is papa. The general 
asked him at once about Martinique and all the islands, 
and Toussaint and St. Domingo, and everything. Well, 
in two minutes, you know, papa told him more than all 
their old reports and despatches would tell him in a month, 
— more, indeed, than they knew. 

Well, the general was delighted. He took papa over to 
a sofa, and there they sat and sat; and, Inez, there they sat 
and sat; and they talked for two hours. What do you 
think of that ? People kept coming in; and there was 
poor I talking to Madame, and to half the finest women in 
France; and everybody was looking into the corner, and 
wondering who “ VAmericain magnifique ” was, whom the 
consul had got hold of. Madame sent them some coffee. 
But nobody dared to interrupt; and at last Gen. Buona¬ 
parte rose and laughed, and said, “ Madame will never for¬ 
give me for my boots; ” but he made papa promise to 
come again last night. Now, last night, you know, was 
one of the regular court receptions, — one of the Malmaison 
ones, I mean. You know the state receptions are at the 
Thuilleries. Of this I must take another sheet to tell you. 

When Inez read this letter, she said to her aunt,— 

“Do you know what Malmaison is? It is not a 
very nice name.” 

“It must be their country-house: read on, and 
perhaps you will see.” 


or, Show your Passports 197 

I have shown papa what I have written. He laughs at 
my account of him, and says it is all trash. But it is all 
gospel true, and shall stand. He also says that you will 
not know what Malmaison is. Malmaison is an elegant 
place, about ten miles from Paris, which Mme. Buonaparte 
bought, — oh ! two years or more ago. She carries with 
her her old island tastes, and is very fond of flowers; and 
at this house with the bad name she has made exquisite 
gardens. She really does a good deal of gardening her¬ 
self, — that is, such gardening as you women do. I have 
gone round with her for an hour together, carrying strings 
and a watering-pot, helping Mile. Hortense — who, you 
know, is just your age — to help her mother. 

Well, so much for Malmaison. 

Papa had really had what he calls a “ very good time ” 
talking with the First Consul. He says he is the most 
sensible man he has seen since he bade Mr. Pollock 
good-by. I am afraid I did not take much pains to tell 
him that the grand reception of last night was to be a very 
different thing from that informal visit; for, if I had told 
him, he never would have gone. But when he was once 
there, why, he could not turn back, you know. 

And it was very brilliant. Indeed, since the battle of 
Marengo, nothing can be too brilliant for everybody’s ex¬ 
pectations; and, although Malmaison is nothing to the 
Thuilleries, yet a fete there is very charming. When papa 
saw lackeys standing on the steps, and found that our 
carriage had to wait its turn, and that our names were to 
be called from sentry to sentry, he would gladly have turned 
and fled. But, like a devoted son, I explained to him that 
this would be cowardly. I reminded him that he had 
promised Gen. Buonaparte to come, and that his word was 
as good as his bond. Before he knew it, a chamberlain 



i 98 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

had us in hand; and we passed along the brilliant line to 
be presented in our turn. 

Inez, dear, I confess to you that I had an elegant little 
queue, and a soup$on of powder upon my hair. So had 
most of the gentlemen around me. But, Gen. Buona¬ 
parte hates powder, they say, when it is not gunpowder; 
and he and dear papa had no flake of it on the locks, which 
they wore as nature made them. They were the handsom¬ 
est men in that room, — I who write, not excepted. Now, 
my dear sister, never tell me that I am vain again. 

Well, when our turn came, Mme. Buonaparte gave papa 
her hand, which is very unusual, and fairly detained him 
every time he offered to move on. This left me, who came 
next, to talk to Mile. Hortense, who was cliarmante. She 
never looked so well. I did not care how long the general 
and madame held papa. I asked Hortense about the last 
game of Prison Bars, which is all the rage at Malmaison. 
I engaged her for the third dance. I promised her some 
Cherokee roses, and I must write to Turner about them. 
She asked why papa did not bring you, and I said you 
were to enter a Spanish convent. She guessed by my eye 
that this was nonsense, and then we had a deal of fun 
about it. The chamberlain was fuming and swearing in¬ 
wardly ; but the general and Mme. Buonaparte would not 
let papa go on. Papa was splendid ! You would have 
thought he had been at court all his life. At last he tore 
himself away. I bowed to Madame, who smiled. I bowed 
to the First Consul, and he said, “Ah, monsieur, Eugene est 
ctu desespoir de vous voir . 11 I smiled and bowed again. 
And so papa and I were free. 

But there were ever so many people looking on, and I 
was so proud to present to him this and that of my friends ! 
I brought Lagrange to him, who taught us our mathe- 


or, Show your Passports 199 

matics when I was in the Polytechnic. Lagrange brought 
up La Place, who is another of our great men. I presented 
him to Mme. Berthollet, and to Mme. Campan, who is a 
favorite here, and to Mme. Morier; and they all asked him 
such funny questions ! You know they all think that we 
live close by Niagara, and breakfasted every day with Gen. 
Washington, and that all of us who were old enough 
fought in the battle of Bunker Hill, while of course we were 
playmates with Mme. Buonaparte. 

At last the dancing came. The rooms are not very 
large, but large enough ; and the music, — oh, Inez dear ! it 
was ravissante. The First Consul took out a hideous crea¬ 
ture : I forget her name ; but she was a returned 'emigree, of 
a great royalist family, who had buried her prejudices, or 
pretended to. Gen. Junot took out Madame: that was 
a couple worth seeing. I danced with Mile. Poitevin, a 
lovely girl; but I must tell of her another time. O Inez ! 
the First Consul dances — well — horridly! He hates to 
dance. He called for that stupid old “Monaco,” as he 
always does, because he cannot make so many mistakes in 
it. Well, he only danced this first time ; and I had charm¬ 
ing dances with Mile. Julie Ramey, and then with the 
lovely Hortense. Was not I the envied of the evening then ! 

It was then that, looking round to see how papa fared, 
Mile. Hortense caught my eye, and said so roguishly, “ Ah, 
monsieur , qu ’ est-ce qui vous epouvante ! we will take care of 
your papa. See, the consul himself has charge of him.” True 
enough, the consul had found him, and led him across to a 
quiet place by the conservatory door; and, Inez, they 
talked the whole evening again. 

And it was in this talk — when papa had been explaining 
to him what a sin and shame it was that so fine a country 
as Louisiana should have been given over to that beast of a 




200 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Charles Fourth and that miserable Godoy, only I suppose 
he put it rather better — that the consul smiled, tapped 
his snuff-box, gave papa snuff, and said, “Mons. Perry, you 
Americans can keep secrets. You may count yourselves 
republicans from to-day.” Papa did not know what he 
meant, and said so plumply. 

Then he told papa that he had received an express from 
Madrid that very morning. Inez, an article is signed by 
which Louisiana is given back to France. Think of that! 
The Orleans girls may dance French dances and sing 
French songs as much as they please; and old Casa Calvo 
may go hang himself. 

Only, Inez, you must not tell any one; it is a secret 
article, and the First Consul said that no public announce¬ 
ment of any sort was to be made. 

Now, after that, who says it is not profitable to go to 
court ? I am sure papa will never say so again. But the 
paper is all out, and the oil is all out in my new argand. 
Salute dear Aunt Eunice with my heart’s love; and believe 
me, in a chere sceur , 

Votre frere ires dev one, 

Roland Perry. 


CHAPTER XVI 

NEWS ? WHAT NEWS ? 

“ News! great news ! in the ‘ London Gazette 1 ! 

But what the news is, I will not tell you yet; 

For, if by misfortune my news I should tell, 

Why, never a ‘ London Gazette ’ should I sell.” 

Cries of London. 

These letters from Paris did not, of course, reach 
Eunice and Inez till the short winter—if winter it 


or, Show your Passports 201 

may be called — of Texas was over; and February 
found them enjoying the wonders and luxuries of 
that early spring. 

The surprising news with which both letters ended 
gave them enough food for talk when they were 
alone; and the White Hawk, almost their constant 
companion, saw that some subject of unusual serious¬ 
ness had come in, — a subject, too, which, with her 
scanty notions of European politics, she could hardly 
be expected to understand. In her pretty broken 
English she would challenge them to tell her what 
they read and what they said. 

“ Te-reaty— what is te-reaty, my sister? F-erance 
— what is F-erance, my aunty?” 

But to make the girl understand how the signing 
of a piece of parchment by an imbecile liar in a 
Spanish palace should affect the status, the happi¬ 
ness, or the social life of the two people dearest to 
her in the world, was simply impossible. 

The ladies were both glad to receive such news. 
Everybody in Orleans would be glad, excepting the 
little coterie of the governor’s court. Everybody in 
America would be glad. Better that Louisiana should 
be in the hands of a strong power than a weak one. 
But still their secret gave the ladies anxiety. If, as 
Silas Perry had suggested — if the dice-box should 
throw war between Spain and France, here they were 
in San Antonio at the beginning only of a visit which 
was meant to last a year. And, worse, if the dice-box 
should throw war between France and England, every¬ 
body knew that an English squadron would pounce 
on Orleans, and their country would be changed again. 





202 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ I told Captain Nolan one day,” said Inez, in mock 
grief, which concealed much real feeling, “that I was 
a girl without a country. I seem to be likely to be 
a girl of three countries, if not of four.” 

Three months of garrison life, with such contriv¬ 
ances as the ladies around them had devised to while 
away time, had given to all three of the new-comers 
a set of habits quite different from those of the home 
at Orleans. The presence of Cordero and of Herrara 
there, both remarkable men, seemed almost of course. 
Eunice Perry was right in saying that neither of them 
belonged there. But they both liked the residence, 
and, still more, they liked each other. This was for¬ 
tunate for our friends; for it proved that in Madame 
Herrara, who was herself an English lady by birth, they 
found a charming friend. The ladies named in Miss 
Perry’s letter to her brother were all women of brill¬ 
iancy or of culture, such as would have been prizes in 
any society. The little tertulias of the winter became, 
therefore, parties of much more spirit than any Eunice 
had known, even in the larger and more brilliant 
social circle of Orleans; and in the long hours of the 
morning, when the gentlemen were pretending to 
drill recruits, or to lay out lines for imaginary build¬ 
ings, or otherwise to develop the town which the gov¬ 
ernors wanted to make here, the ladies made pleasant 
and regular occasions for meeting, when a new poem 
by Valdez, or an old play by Lope de Vega, enter¬ 
tained them all together. 

In all these gatherings the Donna Maria Dolores, 
whom our fair Inez had gone so far West to see, was, 
if not leader, the admired, even the beloved, centre 


or. Show your Passports 203 

of each little party. Eunice Perry came to prize her 
more highly, as she wondered at her more pro¬ 
foundly, With every new and quiet interview between 
them. Her figure was graceful; her face animated 
rather than beautiful; her eyes quick and expressive. 
There was something contagious in her welcome; 
and so sympathetic was she, in whatever society, that 
her presence in any tertulia was enough to put the 
whole company at ease,—certainly to lift it quite 
above the conventional type of formal Spanish inter¬ 
course. There were in the garrison-circle some 
officers’ wives who would have been very unfortunate 
but for Maria Dolores. Either for beauty, or wealth, 
or something less explicable, they had been married 
by men of higher rank than their own; and now they 
found themselves among ladies who were ladies, and 
officers most of whom were really gentlemen, while 
their own training had been wholly neglected, and they 
were absolutely in the crass ignorance of a Mexican 
peasant’s daughter or of the inmate of a Moorish 
harem. They could dress, they could look pretty, 
and that was absolutely all. There were not quite 
enough of them, this winter, to make a faction of their 
own, and send the others to Coventry. Indeed, the 
superior rank, as it happened, of Madame Herrara, 
of the Senora Valois, and of Dona Maria Dolores, 
to say nothing of others who have been named, made 
this impossible. So was it that Doha Maria had 
her opportunity, and used it, to make them at ease, 
and to see that they were not excluded from the little 
contrivances by which the winter was led along. She 
always had a word even for the dullest of them. A 




204 Philip Nolans Friends; 

bit of embroidery, or some goose-grease for a child’s 
throat, or a message to Monte-Clovez, something or 
other gave importance, for the moment, even to a 
stupid wax-doll, who had perhaps but just found out 
she was a fool, and had not found out what she 
should do about it. 

It was in a little gathering, rather larger than was 
usual, in which they were turning over two or three 
plays of Lope de Vega, and wondering whether they 
could spur the gentlemen up to act one with them, 
that Eunice and Inez both received a sudden shock 
of surprise, which made them listen with all their 
ears, and look away from each other with terrible 
determination. 

“Who shall take Alfonso?” said the eager Ma¬ 
dame Zuloaga. 

“ Oh, let Mr. Lonsdale take Alfonso ! He is just mys¬ 
terious enough! And then he has so little to say.” 

“ But what he does say would kill us with laughing; 
his English-Spanish is so funny! Do the English 
really think they know our language better than 
we do?” 

“ I am sure I should never advise him, But any¬ 
body can take Alfonso. Ask Captain Garcia to take 
it. — Luisa, do you ask him: he will do anything 
you ask.” 

The fair Luisa said nothing, but blushed and 
giggled. 

One of the wax-doll people spoke up bluntly, and, 
in a language not absolutely Castilian, said,— 

“ Captain Garcia will be gone. His troop is ordered 
out against Nolano.” 




or, Show your Passports 205 

“ Gone ! ” cried two or three of the younger ladies. 
And only Eunice cared whether the troop went 
against Apaches or Comanches, or to relieve a garri¬ 
son in New Mexico, so it was to go: it was the loss 
of partners for which they grieved, not any particular 
danger to friends or to enemies. 

Eunice, however, picked up the dropped subject. 

“ Did you say they went against Nolan? ” 

“Why, yes, or rather no. They go to take the 
place at Chihuahua, you know, of the two troops who 
go, you know, against the Americanos. Who go? 
or are they now gone, Dona Carlota? Was it not 
you who told me?” 

No, it was not Dona Carlota who had told her; 
and soon it proved that nobody should have told her, 
and that she should not have told what she had 
heard. De Nava had intentionally sent his troopers 
from distant Chihuahua, because the Americanos 
would not watch that city; and he had not meant to 
i give any sign of activity eastward in San Antonio, 
which they would watch. The truth was, he was 
1 jealous and suspicious both of Cordero and of Her 
rara, though they were his countrymen. 

But by some oversight a letter had been read in 
presence of the wax-doll, which she should never 
have heard; and thus the secret of secrets, which 
Herrara and Cordero and Barelo had preserved most 
jealously, was blurted out in the midst of four-and- 
twenty officers’ wives. 

So soon as the ladies parted, Eunice made it her 
business to find the husband of her sister, and spoke 
to him very frankly. She told him that she knew 







206 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

Nolan, and knew him well; that he evein accompanied 
them for a day or two on their expedition. She told 
him on what cordial terms he was with all the Span¬ 
ish governors of Orleans. She ridiculed the idea of 
his making war with a little company of “ grooms 
and stablers ” (for into Spanish words of such force 
was she obliged to translate the horse-hunters of his 
party) ; and she explained to Major Barelo, that, 
though the people of the West were eager to open 
the Mississippi, the very last thing they wanted was 
to incense the military commanders of Mexico. 

Major Barelo was an accomplished officer of Euro¬ 
pean experience, and a man of rare good sense. He 
heard Eunice with sympathy all through, and then 
he said to her, — 

“ I can trust you as I can trust my wife. You are 
right in saying that this folly is the most preposter¬ 
ous extravagance that has crossed any ruler’s brain 
since the days of Don Quixote'. 

“You are right in saying that Don Pedro de Nava 
gave to this very Nolan a pass, not to say an invitation, 
to carry on this very trade. Why, we know him here: 
he has been here again and again. 

“ But it seems that you do not know that De Nava 
has been told to change his policy. New kings, new 
measures. He is a Pharaoh who does not know your 
Joseph, my dear sister. 

“He does not dare give his commands to us. We 
have too much sense. We have too much civilization. 
We have too much of the new century. Herrara or 
Cordero would laugh his plan to scorn. Far from 
incensing the Kentuckianos, they would let the cap- 


or, Show your Passports 20 7 

tain slip through their fingers, and wisely. We have 
had a plenty of despatches from Nacogdoches about 
him; but we light our cigars with them, my dear 
.sister.” 

“Yes, yes,” said Eunice eagerly; “but what does 
De Nava do? Is he sending out an army? ” Then 
she saw she was too vehement: she collected herself, 
and said, “You see, my dear brother, I know the 
American people. I know that, if injustice is done, 
there is danger of war.” 

“ And so do I,” said Barelo sadly. “ And when 
the war comes, now or fifty years hence, who has the 
best chances on these prairies, — your Kentucky 
giants, or my master four thousand miles away in the 
Escorial? ” 

“Do you know when the army started?” said 
Eunice, giving him time to pause. 

“ Army ! there is no army, — a wretched hundred 
or two of lancers. Oh! they left, I think they left 
Chihuahua just before Christmas. We heard of them 
at El Paso last week. That was when we got this 
order for two troops of the queen’s regiment to go 
back to the commandant to take their places.” And 
then he added, “ I am as much annoyed as you can 
be, — more. But a soldier is a soldier.” 

“ A soldier is a soldier,” said Eunice almost fiercely, 
to Inez afterwards, when she told her of this conver¬ 
sation, “ and a woman, alas, is a woman. How can we 
put poor Nolan on his guard, — tell him that these 
brigands are on his track? If only we had known it 
sooner! ” 

How indeed ! For William Harrod had left them 










208 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

so soon as San Antonio was in sight. He had called 
off with him Richards and King and Adams, and had 
said lightly, in his really tender parting from Inez and 
Eunice, that he should be with Nolan in five days’ 
time. He counted without his host, alas ! but of this 
Eunice and Inez knew nothing till long after. 

“Do you believe Ransom could slip through?” 
said Eunice thoughtfully. 

“ He could and he could not,” said Inez. “ In the 
first place, he would not go. The Inquisition could 
not make him go. He is here to take care of you 
and me: if you and I want to go, he will take 
us; and we shall arrive safely, and Nolan, dear 
fellow, will be saved. But, if we think we cannot 
tell Aunt Dolores that we want to go up to the 
Upper Brassos, why, as you know, Ransom will 
not budge.” And the girl smiled sadly enough 
through her tears. 

“ Me will go,” said White Hawk, who was looking 
from one to the other as they spoke, judging by 
their faces, rather than their words, what they were 
saying. 

“Where will me go?” said Inez, hugging her and 
kissing her. The wonder and depth of White 
Hawk’s love for her was always a new joy and new 
surprise to Inez, who, perhaps, had not been for¬ 
tunate in the friends whom her schoolgirl experi¬ 
ences had made for her among her own sex. 

“ Me go on horse-trail; me go up through mesquit 
country — find prairie country; come up through 
wood three day, four day, five day — White Wolf 
River; me swim White Wolf River; more woods — 


or, Show your Passports 209 

more woods five day, six, seven day — no matter 
how much day; me find Harrod, find King, find 
Richards, find Blackburn, find Nolan — find other 
plenty white men, good white men, your white men 
— hunt horses, plenty horses — plenty white men." 

“You witch!" cried Inez; “and how do you 
know that?” 

White Hawk laughed with the quiet Indian laugh, 
which Inez said was like Ransom’s choicest expres¬ 
sion of satisfaction. 

“ Know it with my ears — know it with my eyes. 
See it. Hear it. Think it. Know it all — know 
it all.” 

“ And you would go back to those horrid woods 
and those fearful Indians, whom you hate so and 
dread so, for the love of your poor Inez ! ” Inez was 
beside herself now, and could not speak for crying. 

Of course White Hawk’s proposal could not be 
heard to for an instant. But all the same: it had 
its fruit, as courage will. 

That afternoon there was some grand parade of 
the little garrison, so that the cavaliers whom Eunice 
and Inez relied upon most often were detained at 
their posts. But Eunice proposed, that, rather than 
lose their regular exercise, they should ride with the 
attendance of Ransom, and rely on meeting the 
major and the other gentlemen as they returned. 
The day was lovely; and they took a longer ride 
than was usual, past the Alamo and up the river¬ 
side. 

Six or seven miles distant from the Presidio, 
as they came out on a lovely opening, which they 
14 








210 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

had made their object, they found, to their surprise, 
a little camp of Indians, who had established them¬ 
selves there as if for a day or two. There was 
nothing unusual in the sight; and the riding party 
would hardly have stopped, but that the little red 
children came screaming after them, with tones quite 
different from the ordinary beggar-whine, which is 
much the same with Bedouins, with lazzaroni, and 
with Indians. White Hawk, of course, first caught 
their meaning. “ Friends, friends,” she said laughing, 
— “old friends,” as she put her hand upon Inez’s 
hand to arrest her in the fast gallop in which she 
was hurrying along. 

Inez thought White Hawk meant they were friends 
of hers, and for a moment drew bridle. Eunice and 
Ransom stopped also. 

“No, no! Friends, — your friends, Inez,—your 
friends.” And, as Inez turned, indeed, she saw 
waved in triumph a scarf which was no common 
piece of Indian finery; and which, in a minute more, 
she saw was the scarf she had given to a child 
on the levee of the Mississippi, in the very first week 
of their voyaging. 

“ Have the wretches come all the way here?” she 
said, surprised; and she stopped, almost uncon¬ 
sciously now, to see what they would say. 

To her amusement, and to Eunice’s as well, with 
great rapidity and much running to and fro from 
lodge to lodge, there were produced, from wrap¬ 
pings as many as if they had been diamonds or 
rubies, all the little cuttings of paper — horses, 
buffaloes, dancing boys and girls — with which 


or, Show your Passports 2 11 

Eunice had led along the half-hour while they were 
waiting for the boatmen, on that day of their first 
adventure. 

She smiled graciously, not sorry that she had a 
good horse under her this time, and acknowledged 
the clamorous homage which one after another paid 
to her. Then, remembering her new advantage, 
she asked the White Hawk to interpret for her; and 
the girl had no difficulty in doing so. 

Eunice bade her tell them that she could make 
them no buffaloes now, — not even an antelope; 
but, if they would come down to the Presidio the 
next morning, they should all have some sugar. 

They said they were afraid to come to the Pre¬ 
sidio : one of their people had been flogged there. 

A grim smile appeared on Ransom’s face, which 
implied, to those who knew him, a wish that the 
same treatment had gone farther. 

“ Tell them, then, that I will send them some 
sugar, and send them some antelopes, if they will 
come to-morrow morning to the Alamo;” and the 
White Hawk told them, and they all rode on. 

“Do you not see,” said Eunice quickly, “if the 
White Hawk can go up the Brassos, these people 
can go up there? If she knows the way she can 
tell them. There must be some way in which they 
can take a token or a letter.” 

She turned her horse, so soon as they had well 
passed the camp, beckoned Ransom from the rear to 
join her, and bade the girls fall in behind. 

Taking up the road homeward, but no longer gal¬ 
loping, or even trotting, she said to the old man, — 









212 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ Ransom, Captain Nolan is in great danger.” 

“ Een told me so,” replied he, too much occupied 
with anxious thought to care much for etiquette. 

“ There are a hundred or two Spanish troopers 
hunting him, if they have not found him; and, what 
is worse, they mean to fight him, Ransom.” 

“The cap’n ’ll giv6 ’em hell, ma’am.” 

“ The captain will fight them if they find him; 
but, Ransom, they must not find him. Ransom, 
I don’t want the people down below to know any¬ 
thing about this; but to-morrow morning some 
of these Indians must start with a letter to the 
captain; and they must make haste, Ransom. Will 
you bring it out here before daylight?” 

“ Yes, ’m. But it ain’t no use. Can’t send no 
letter. Poor set,— liars, all on um. Show the letter 
to the priest before they go. Priest got hold uv 
every darn one on um. Tell um all he’ll roast um 
all, ef they go nigh white man. Liars all on um,— 
can’t send no letter. ’T ain’t no use.” 

“Do you think the priest knows these people?” 

“ Know it, jest as well as nothin’. Hearn um 
tell at market to-day. Old Father Jos6 cum; and 
the young one, black-haired rascal, he cum too; 
cum and gin um a picter-book, and cum back with 
five beaver and three antelope skin and two buffaloes. 
Gin um a picter-book. Hearn all about it at market. 
All liars! Injuns is liars; priests is liars too.” 

Eunice thought of tokens which messengers had 
carried, who knew not what they bore. She longed 
to tell Ransom some story of Cyrus or of Pyrrhus; 
but she contented herself with saying,— 




or, Show your Passports 213 

“ I must send word.” And she called Inez to 
her, and the White Hawk. 

“ Ma-ry, can I send these people to the captain? 
Can you tell them how to go?” 

“Tell — yes — now;” and the girl checked her 
horse, as if to return with the message. 

“No, not now, Ma-ry. Can I write? Will these 
people take the letter?” 

“Give sugar, — much sugar, — take letter. Take 
it, throw it in river, throw it in fire. All laugh. Eat 
sugar, throw letter away. All lie. All steal. 

“ Give sugar, little sugar, — give letter,— letter say 
Nolan send other letter. Other letter come, you give 
sugar, — oh, give heap sugar! heap sugar, — see?” 

“Yes, yes, — I see,” said Eunice. “When they 
come back with other letter from Captain Nolan, I 
will pay them with sugar.” 

“ See — yes — yes — see ? Heap sugar all come.” 

Then she opened and shut her hands quickly. 

“ Five, five, five days, heap sugar. Five, five, five, 
five days, little heap sugar. Five, five, five, five, five, 
five days, gourd of sugar. More days, no sugar, no 
sugar, bad Indian. Nolan dead. No sugar at all.” 

“ Ma-ry, these people know the priest. Father Jose 
they know. Father Jeronimo they know. Priests 
do not love Nolan. Will they show the priest my 
letter? ” 

The girl took the question in an instant, — took it, 
it would seem, before it was asked. Her face changed. 

“ Show old White Head letter,—White Head tear 
letter, burn letter.” 

But in an instant she added, — 



214 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

“White Hawk send skin. Old White Head no 
read skin.” And she flung up her head like a prin¬ 
cess, proud of her superior accomplishment. Eunice 
took her idea at once, praised her, and encouraged 
it. The girl meant that, if she traced on the back of 
an antelope skin one*of the hieroglyphic pictures of 
the Indian tribes, Nolan would understand the warn¬ 
ing she gave; while the average Franciscan, with all 
his accomplishments, would let it pass without com¬ 
prehending its meaning. 

In such discussions, on an easy gallop, they returned 
homeward. As they approached the garrison, they 
met Mr. Lonsdale, the stranger whom the gossiping 
party of ladies had pronounced so mysterious. 
Eunice, to say the truth, was much of their mind. 
Who Mr. Lonsdale was, what he was, and why he 
was there, no one knew. And, while she disliked the 
gossiping habit of most of the people around her, 
she did not like to be in daily intercourse with a man 
who might be a spy from the headquarters at the 
City of Mexico, might be an agent of the King of 
England, might be anything the Mexican ladies said 
he was. 

For all this, he and the ladies were on terms ex¬ 
ternally friendly. He stopped as they approached, 
and asked permission to join their party, which 
Eunice of course granted cordially. He turned, 
and rode with her. The two girls dropped behind. 

After a moment’s hesitation, he said, — 

“ I should be sorry to be the bearer of bad news, 
Miss Ferry. Perhaps you are indifferent to my news. 
But I came out hoping to meet you,” 


2I 5 


or, Show your Passports 

And he stopped as if hesitating anew. 

Eunice said, with a shade of dignity, that she was 
much obliged to him. 

“ I thought— I supposed — I did not know,” said 
the Englishman, with more even than the usual diffi¬ 
culty of his countrymen in opening a conversation, 
“ you may not have heard that a military force is in 
the upper valleys, looking for the American horse- 
hunters.” 

What did this man mean? Was he a quiet emis¬ 
sary from the provincial capital, whose business it 
was to gain information about poor Nolan? Was he 
trying to get a crumb from Miss Perry? She was 
quite on her guard. She felt quite sure of her ground, 
too,— that she could foil him, by as simple an arti¬ 
fice as — the truth. 

“ Oh, yes, Mr. Lonsdale! I have heard this. I 
heard it from Madame Malgares, and in more detail 
from one of the officers.” 

“ Then perhaps you know more than I do.” 

“ Very probably,” said Eunice, not without the 
slightest shade of triumph. 

The mysterious Mr. Lonsdale was thrown off his 
guard. Eunice had no wish to relieve him ; and they 
rode on in silence. With some gulping and possibly 
a little flush, he said : “ I had thought you might be 
anxious about Mr. Nolan or about the Kentucky 
gentlemen. I understood Miss Inez to speak as if 
some of them were your escort here.” 

How much did he know, and how little? Eunice’s 
first thought was to say, “ The Kentucky gentlemen 
will take care of themselves.” But this tone of de- 





2i6 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

fiance might complicate things. Once more she tried 
the truth. 

“ Oh, yes ! Mr. Harrod and two or three more of 
that party came to Antonio with us.” She longed to 
say, “ Why did not your king pounce on them then ? ” 
but again she was prudent. 

Mr. Lonsdale tried to break her guard once more. 
“The Spanish force is quite a large one,” said he. 

Eunice longed to say, “ I know that too.” But her 
conversation with Major Barelo had been confidential. 
She said, “ Indeed! ” and the Englishman was dis¬ 
armed. He made no further attempt. They came 
without another word to the colonel’s quarters; he 
helped the proud Miss Perry to dismount, and the 
ladies sought their own apartments. 

Before bedtime the White Hawk brought her letter 
to Eunice. She came into the double room which 
Eunice and her niece occupied; and she bore on her 
back a parcel of skins, exactly as a squaw might 
bring them into the warehouse for trade. She flung 
them down on the floor with just the air of a tired 
Indian, glad his tramp was at an end. Then, with a 
very perfect imitation of the traders’ jargon, she said: 

“Buy skin? ugh? good skin? ugh? Five skin, six 
skin, good skin. Buy? ugh? Whiskey, sugar, pow¬ 
der,— one whiskey, two sugar, four powder, — six 
skin. Ugh?” 

And she held up one hand and the forefinger of 
the other. 

Eunice and Inez laughed ; and Inez said,— 

“ Yes, yes ! good skin — buy skin — one skin, five 
skin. Heap sugar, heap whiskey, heap powder! ” 


or. Show your Passports 217 

So the mock bargain was completed. The girls 
knelt, and untied the cords; and the White Hawk 
affected to praise her skins, — the color, the smooth¬ 
ness, the age, and so on. And when she had played 
out her joke, and not till then, she turned them all 
! over, and showed the grotesque figures which she had 
| drawn on the back of one of them. Even to Eunice’s 
eye, although she had the clew, they showed nothing. 
Perhaps she began at the top when she should have 
begun at the bottom: perhaps she began at the bot¬ 
tom when she should have begun at the middle, 
i Ma-ry enjoyed her puzzled expression, but made no 
sign till Eunice said,— 

“ I can make nothing of it. You must show me.” 

Then the White Hawk laughed and explained. 
From point to point of the skin her finger dashed 
— who should say by what law? But here was a 
group made up of an eagle and ten hands, ten feet, 
and ten other hands. This meant a hundred eagles 
and fifty more, — and eagles were “enemies.” In a 
distant corner was a round shield, in another a lance 
with scalps attached, in another the feather of a hel- 
, met. This showed that she supposed the enemies 
were lancers ; that they wore the Spanish helmet, and 
carried the Spanish shields. Another character had 
three Roman crosses: these were the crosses of the 
cathedral at Chihuahua. Nolan had seen them, and 
the White Hawk had heard of them. Far and wide 
had their fame gone among those simple people; for 
that cathedral was as the St. Peter’s of the whole of 
Northern Mexico. And so the record went on. The 
White Hawk assured her friends that so soon as 




2 i 8 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Nolan or Harrod saw the skin they would know 
what, as the ladies could very well understand, very 
few white men would know: that a hundred and fifty 
Spanish lancers had left Chihuahua in search of him. 
Then she showed where the representation of six 
bears’ paws showed that on the sixth day of the 
moon of the bears the expedition started; and then 
where a chestnut-burr, by the side of men fording a 
river, showed that they crossed the Rio Grande after 
the month of chestnuts had come in. 

All this Eunice heard and approved with wonder. 
She praised the girl to her heart’s content. 

“ Where did you find your colors, my darling? ” 

And Ma-ry confessed, that, failing walnut-husks 
and oak-galls, she had contented herself with Inez’s 
inkstand. 

“ But this red around the scalps, this red crest of 
the turkey’s head, these red smooches on the 
lances? ” 

The White Hawk paused a moment, turned off the 
question as if it were an idle one; but, when she was 
pressed, she stripped up the sleeve of her dress, and 
showed the fresh wound upon her arm, where she 
had, without hesitation, used her own blood for 
vermilion. 

Then Inez kissed her again and again. But the 
girl would not pretend that she thought this either 
pain or sacrifice. 

Eunice thanked her, but told her she must always 
trust them more. And then they all corded up the 
pack together; and, under the White Hawk’s hands, 
it assumed again the aspect of the most unintelligent 


or, Show your Passports 219 

bale of furs that ever passed from an Indian’s hands 
to a trader’s. It was agreed that at daybreak Ransom 
and Ma-ry should carry the parcel to the Indian 
camp, and Ma-ry should try the force of her rhetoric, 
backed with promises of heaps of sugar, to send a 
party with the message. 

“It is all very fine,’’ said Inez; “and if that skin 
ever reaches him, I suppose that he or Captain Harrod 
will disentangle its riddles. But I have more faith 
in ten words of honest English than in all this 
galimatias .” 

“ So have I, dear child, if the honest English ever 
comes to him. See what I have done. I have begged 
from Dolores this pretty prayer-book. There is no 
treason there. I have loosened the parchment cover 
here, and have written on the inside of it your ten 
words, and more. See, I said, — 

“ ‘ The governor sent a hundred and fifty lancers after you 
at Christmas. They were at El Paso last week and mean 
fight.’ 

“ You see I printed this in old text, and matched 
the color of the old Latin, as well as its character. 
These people shall take that to Captain Nolan with 
this note.” 

And she read the note she had written: — 

“ < My dear Cousin, — May the Holy Mother keep you 
in her remembrance ! My prayer for you, day and night, is 
that you may be saved. Forget the vanities and sins of 
those shameless heretics, and enter into the arms of our 
mother, the Church. Study well, in each day’s prayers, the 






220 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

holy book I send yon. On our knees we daily beg that you 
may see the errors of your wandering and return.’ 

“ That will make him search the book through and 
through; and if he does not rip off this parchment 
cover, and find what I have written on the inside, he 
is not the man I take him to be. 

“ And now, girls, go to bed, both of you: Ma-ry 
will need to be moving bright and early, if she is to 
take this to the redskins before the fort is stirring.” 


CHAPTER XVII 

MINES AND COUNTER-MINES 

“ Seek not thou to find 
The sacred counsels of almighty mind : 

Involved in darkness lies the great decree, 

Nor can the depths of fate be pierced by thee; 

What fits thy knowledge, thou the first shalt know.” 

Homer. 

WlTlI the gray of the morning the White Hawk left 
the house, and found her way out of the little settle¬ 
ment. The girl’s history was perfectly known to 
every one at the post, and any waywardness in her 
habits attracted no surprise; indeed, it attracted no 
attention. On his part, Ransom had saddled his own 
horse, had fastened behind the saddle the pack of furs, 
and a package, only not quite so large, of the much- 
prized sugar. 

“ All nonsense,” he had said to Eunice. “ Gin urn 
two quarts whiskey, and they’ll go to hell for you. 


221 


or. Show your Passports 

Sugar’s poor sugar: your brother would not look at 
it, it’s so bad; but it’s too good for them redskins. 
Gin um whiskey.” 

But Eunice was resolute; and the old man knew 
that he must throw the sugar away, because she so 
bade him. He satisfied himself, therefore, with taking 
from the storehouse on her order just twice as much 
as she had bidden him. He was well clear of any 
observation from the Presidio when he saw Ma-ry in 
advance of him, moving so quickly that he had to 
abandon the walk of his horse, and come to a trot, 
that he might overtake her. 

“ Mornin’, Miss Mary: better jump up here. The 
old bay’s often carried Miss Inez.” 

And in a moment he had lifted the girl, who was 
an expert in horsemanship in all its guises, so that 
she sat behind him on the pack of furs steadying her¬ 
self by placing one hand upon his shoulder. Having 
entirely satisfied himself, after the first few days of 
his observation of the White Hawk, that she was, in 
very truth, neither a “ nigger ” nor an “ Ingin,” he 
had taken her into the sacred chamber of his high 
favor, and did not regard her as humbug or liar, 
which is more than can be said of his regard for 
most men and women. 

“Want ye to tell them redskins to keep away from 
them priests and friars, Miss Mary. Priests and friars 
ain’t no good nowhere. These here is wuss than most 
on um be. Tell the redskins to keep clear on um.” 

The White Hawk thought she understood him, and 
said so. 

“Tell um to make haste, lazy critters, if they can. 





222 


Philip Nolans Friends; 

Wanted to go myself to tell Mr. Nolan. Can’t go, 
cos must stay with the young ladies. But I could 
get there and back ’fore them lazy redskins will go 
halfway. Tell um to be here in a week, and .we’ll 
give um five pounds of good sugar, every man on um.” 

Ma-ry understood enough to know that this proposal 
was absurd. She told Ransom, in language which he 
did not understand, that if the messengers reached 
Nolan in less than eight or ten days it would be by 
marvellous good luck. As she did not use his words, 
spoke of suns and nights, and of hands whenever she 
would say “ five,” the old man did not at all follow 
her; but he was relieved by thinking that she under¬ 
stood him, and said so. 

“That’s so: let um travel all day and all night 
too. I’d get there myself by day arter to-morrow; 
but them redskins don’t know nothin’.” 

The truth was, that he was as ignorant as a mole of 
Nolan’s position and of the way thither. But he had 
always relied, and not in vain, on his own quick good 
sense, his iron strength, and his intense determination 
to achieve any task he had, in hand more promptly 
than those around him. He did not, therefore, even 
know that he was bragging. He meant merely to 
say that the Indians were as nearly worthless as 
human beings could be; that their ability was less 
than his in the proportion of one-fifth to one; and, 
by the extravagance of his language, to wash his 
hands, even in the White Hawk’s eyes, of any partici¬ 
pation in the responsibility of this undertaking. 

They were soon in sight of the smoke of the 
lodges; and in a moment more were surrounded 


or, Show your Passports 223 

by the beggar children of a beggar tribe, eager for 
paper gods, for whiskey, for sugar, for ribbons, for 
tobacco, or for anything else that might be passing. 

Ma-ry sought out and found the man who could 
best be called the chief of the party. Ransom had 
dismounted; but she sat upon the saddle still, and 
took an air which was wholly imperial in her deal¬ 
ings with the Crooked Feather. Ransom said after¬ 
ward to Inez, “ The gal’s a queen in her own country, 
she is.” Ma-ry did not ask: she directed. 

The man was amazed that she spoke to him in his 
own language. No white man or woman of the 
Presidio had ever accosted him so till now. He had 
seen her only the day before with a party from the 
fort; and he knew very well that they represented 
the dignitaries of the fort. He did not know who 
she was, nor did the girl make any endeavor to 
explain. 

Simply she bade him, in the most peremptory 
way, take the skins and the little parcel which she 
gave him to the hunting-party whom he would find 
on the Tockanhono, and to be sure he was there 
before the moon changed. When he had done this 
he was to come back, also as soon as might be; and 
when he returned, if he brought any token from the 
long-knife chief whom he found there, he was to 
have sugar in heaps which almost defy the powers 
of our numeration. All the party were to have 
heaps of it. I11 guerdon, or token, Ransom was now 
permitted to open the little pack of sugar which he 
had brought with him, which then lay in tempting 
profusion in its open wrapper while Ma-ry spoke. 






224 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

She was a little annoyed to see that her order — 
for it was hers originally — had been so largely 
exceeded. 

As for the size of the party, the Crooked Feather 
might go alone, or he might take all the lodges, as 
he chose: only he must not tarry. For all who 
went, and all who returned, there would be sugar if 
they were here before the third quarter of the new 
moon. If as late as the next moon, there would be 
no sugar; and the White Hawk’s expression of dis¬ 
gust at a result so wretched was tragical. The so- 
called stoics to whom she spoke affected feelings of 
dismay equal to hers. 

Crooked Feather ventured to suggest that a little 
whiskey made travel quicker. 

The imperial lady rebuked him sternly for the pro¬ 
posal, and he shrunk back ashamed. 

In a rapid council he then decided that only five 
horses with their riders should go, and this under 
his own lead. As for the sugar which Ransom had 
brought and laid before them, it was nothing: even 
a rabbit would not see that any sugar lay there. In 
token of which, as they talked, the Crooked Feather 
and his companions scooped it up in their hands, 
and ate it all; it would not have vanished sooner had 
it been some light soup provided for their refresh¬ 
ment. But he understood that his supposed “White 
Father” who had provided this had sent it only as 
a little token of good-will, — clearly could not, in¬ 
deed, send more, besides the furs and the princess, 
on the back of Ransom’s saddle. A chief of the 
rank and following of Crooked Feather was sub- 


or. Show your Passports 225 

stantially, he said, the equal of his Great Father 
personally unknown to him. But he wore and 
showed a crucifix, which his Great Father had sent 
to him; and as the Great Father had set his heart 
on sending these skins to the long-knife chieftain, 
who was an intimate friend of Crooked Feather’s, 
according to that worthy’s own account, why, 
Crooked Feather would personally undertake their 
safe conduct. 

Even while this harangue went on, the squaws 
detailed for that duty were packing the beasts who 
were to go on the expedition, hastily folding the 
skins of the lodge which was to go. 

Ma-ry was a little surprised to find that she was 
mistaken for an emissary of King Charles the Fourth 
or of the Pope of Rome. In truth, she could not 
herself have named these dignitaries, nor had she the 
least idea of their pretensions. It was idle to try to 
explain that her Great Father was a very different 
person from the Great Father who had started the 
crucifix. She simply applauded the purpose of the 
Crooked Feather to do what she had told him to do; 

, and she did not hesitate to give precise instructions 
to the women who were packing the horses, in the 
same queenly manner with which she had spoken 
before. 

In less than an hour the party was on its way, 
having long before consumed to the last crumb all 
the sugar. Ransom and Ma-ry returned home. 
They parted at the spot where they had met. Ma-ry 
entered the Presidio on one side, and Ransom on the 
other, and it was clear that the absence of neither of 
T 5 







226 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

them had challenged any remark in the laziness of a 
Spanish town. Ma-ry told her story with glee to the 
ladies. Inez fondled and Eunice praised her, only 
trying to warn her of the essential difference between 
such a great father as Silas Perry and such another 
as Pope Pius; of which, however, to repeat again 
MacDonald’s remark to the Japanese governors, 
“ She could make nothing.” 

The same evening the Crooked Feather, who had 
been true to his promise of speed, had advanced as 
far as Gaudaloupe River. He found there a camp¬ 
fire, a little tent, and three horses tethered. It proved 
that the party there consisted of three fathers of the 
Franciscan order, who had left the Alamo for an 
outpost mission. 

The fathers were patronizing and courteous. They 
asked the purpose of Crooked Feather, and he told 
them. They then produced some grape brandy, 
such as the missions were permitted to make for 
their own use, in contravention of the royal policy 
which weighed upon persons not ghostly. Crooked 
Feather took his portion large, and allotted lesser 
quotas to his companions. 

With the second draught he went into more minute 
particulars as to his enterprise, and those who sent 
him. But the fathers seemed to take no interest in 
his narrative. 

As soon as the liquor had done its perfect work, 
and all the Indians slept in a drunken sleep, Father 
Jeronimo cut open the bale of furs, and shook them 
to see what might be hidden. When nothing came 
out, he examined the skins, and . at once found 


or, Show your Passports 227 

Ma-ry’s runes. Of these “ he could make nothing.” 
But he said, with a smile, to the worthy Brother 
Diego who assisted him, that it was a pity to lead 
others into temptation; and he took out that skin 
from the parcel to place it under his own blanket. 

As the Crooked Feather slept heavily, there was 
no difficulty in relieving him also of the smaller 
parcel which Ma-ry had given to him. Father Diego 
crossed himself, and so did the other, on opening it. 
They found the familiar aspect of a little book of 
devotion. None the less did the older priest cut 
open the stitches which held on the parchment over- 
cover. When he noticed, among the words which 
covered the inside, some which he knew were neither 
Spanish nor Latin, he folded the parchment care¬ 
fully, and put it in his bosom. He enclosed in it, as 
he did so, Eunice’s friendly note, of which he could 
read no word. He then tied up the book in its 
wrapper precisely as it had been folded before. 

With his “tokens” thus improved upon, and with 
the worst headache he had ever known in his life, 
the Crooked Feather started the next morning, at a 
later hour than he had intended, on his mission. 

At an earlier hour the three Fathers had started 
on theirs. 





228 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER XVIII 

' WILL HARROD’S FORTUNES 

“ The fragrant birch above him hung 
Its tassels in the sky ; 

And many a vernal blossom sprung 
And nodded careless by. 

“ But there was weeping far away; 

And gentle eyes, for him, 

With watching many an anxious day, 

Were sorrowful and dim.” 

Bryant. 

It is time to go back to the fortunes of poor Will 
Harrod, who had fared, as the winter passed, much 
less satisfactorily than any of the rest of our little 
party. 

With no other adventure which we have thought 
need detain the eager or the sluggish reader, Harrod 
had held on his pleasant journey with the ladies 
till they were fairly within sight of the crosses of 
the church, as they approached San Antonio. Then 
he bade them farewell, with more regret than the 
poor fellow dared express in words, — not with 
more than Eunice expected, or than Inez knew. 

He said, very frankly, that his duty to his com¬ 
mander was to join him as soon as might be, with 
three companions, who were so much force taken 
from the strength of the hunting-party. He said 
that, if he took these men with him into the Pre¬ 
sidio, there was the possibility that they might all 
be detained, whatever the courtesy of Major Barelo, 



or, Show your Passports 229 

and in face of the permission which De Nava had 
given to Nolan. And therefore, he said, though each 
day that he was with them was indescribably de¬ 
lightful to him, — nay, happier than any days had 
ever been before, — he should tear himself away 
now, hoping that it might not be very long before 
at Antonio, or perhaps at Orleans, they might all 
meet again. 

And the loyal fellow would permit himself to 
say no more. Not though he had given every 
drop of his heart’s blood to Inez, — though he 
was willing enough that she should guess that he 
had given it to her,—yet he. would not in words 
say so to her, nor ask the question to which the 
answer seemed to him to be life or death. The 
young reader of to-day must judge whether this 
loyalty or chivalry of his was Quixotic. Poor 
Harrod had time enough to consider it afterward, 
and to ask himself, in every varying tone of feel¬ 
ing and temper, whether he were right or wrong. 
At every night’s encampment on this journey 
he had gone backward and forward on the “ ifs” 
and “ buts ” of the same inquiry. He had deter¬ 
mined, wisely or not wisely, that he would not 
in words ask Inez if she would take that heart 
which was all her own. First, because he had no 
home to offer her. He was an adventurer, and 
only an adventurer; and just now the special ad¬ 
venture in which he was enlisted promised very 
little to any engaged in it. Second, he had known 
Inez only because she had been intrusted to his 
care; and she was intrusted to his care, not by 







230 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

her father, but by Philip Nolan, whom he almost 
adored, who was the person to whose care her 
father had intrusted her. Perhaps her father would 
not have intrusted her to him. Who knew? Very 
certainly Mr. Perry would not have intrusted her 
to him, Master William Harrod thought, had he 
supposed that, before a month was over, he was 
going to play the Moor to this lovely Desdemona, 
and steal her from her father’s home. 

So William Harrod spoke no word of love to 
Inez. To Eunice Perry he had committed himself 
through and through. To Inez he said nothing — 
in words. If every watchful attention meant any¬ 
thing in the girl’s eyes; if the most delicate re¬ 
membrance of her least wish, if provision for every 
whim, if care of her first in every moment of in¬ 
convenience or trial, — if these meant anything, 
why, all that they meant he meant; but he said 
nothing. 

It is not fair to say or to guess whether Inez 
understood all this, how far she understood it, or, 
which is a question more subtle, whether she ever 
asked herself if she understood it. Inez laid down 
to herself this rule, — not an inconvenient one,— 
that she would treat him exactly as she treated 
Philip Nolan. Philip Nolan did not want to marry 
her, she did not want to marry him; yet they were 
the best of friends. * She could joke with him, she 
could talk rhodomontade with him, she could be 
serious with him. They had prayed together, kneel¬ 
ing before the same altar; they had danced together 
at the same ball; they had talked together by 


or. Show your Passports 231 

the hour, riding under these solemn moss-grown 
trees. She would be as much at ease with Philip 
Nolan’s friend as she was with Philip Nolan. That 
ease he had no right to mistake, nor had any one a 
right to criticise. 

There was but one thing which gave the girl 
cause to ponder on her relations to this young 
man: it would be hardly right to say that it gave 
her uneasiness. But here was her aunt Eunice, 
who had never before had any secret from her, 
and from whom she had never had any secret. 
There was not a theme so lofty, there was not a 
folly so petty but that she and Aunt Eunice 
had talked it over, up and down, back and forth, 
right and left. Why did Aunt Eunice never say 
one word to her about William Harrod? She never 
guarded her, never snubbed her, never praised him, 
never blamed him. If Harrod and Inez rode together 
all through an afternoon, talking of books, of poets, 
of religion, or of partners, of ribbons, or of flowers, or 
of clouds, or of sunset, when they came in at night, 
Aunt Eunice had no word of caution, none of curiosity. 
This was not in the least natural; but it was a re¬ 
serve which Inez did not quite venture to break 
in upon. 

Be it observed at the same moment, that Inez was 
not one of the people who have been spoken of, who 
believed that there was a tenderness between Philip 
Nolan and her aunt. Inez knew the absurdity of 
that theory. On the other hand, Inez had never 
forgotten twenty words of confidence which Philip 
Nolan gave her two years before the time of which 







232 Philip Nolans Friends ; 

we speak, when she was beginning to feel that dolls 
were not all in all, when she was growing tall, and 
was very proud of such confidence. Philip Nolan 
had'shown Inez a picture then, — a very lovely pic¬ 
ture of a lady with a very charming face; and this 
picture was not a picture of her aunt Eunice. Inez 
believed in men, and as she knew Phil Nolan’s secret, 
she had never been misled by the theory that there 
was any tender understanding between him and her 
aunt. 

Was there, then, any mysterious understanding 
between William Harrod and her aunt? No! Inez 
did not believe that, either. True, it would happen 
that there would be rides as long when he and her 
aunt were together, and when Ma-ry and Inez were 
together, as there were when he and she talked of 
anything in heaven above, and earth beneath, and 
the waters under the earth. And when Aunt Eunice 
and Captain Harrod had been thus talking together 
all the afternoon or all the morning, when they 
came into camp, while the men were tethering the 
horses, and the women, in the relief of moccasins, 
were lying alone before the fire, even then never 
did Aunt Eunice say one word beyond the merest 
outside-talk of ford or mud, or sun or rain, which 
made any allusion to William Harrod. 

There was one person, however, who made not the 
slightest question as to the relation between these 
parties. The White Hawk knew, without being 
told, that Harrod loved Inez as his very life. When 
the two girls were alone, she never hesitated to tell 
Inez so; and she never hesitated to add that it 


or. Show your Passports 233 

would be strange indeed, seeing what manner of 
girl her own Inez was, if he did not love her as 
his very life. Nay, there were times when, with 
such language as the girls had, this waif from the 
forest would venture the question to which she 
never got any answer, — whether Inez did not 
have the least little bit of thought of him, though 
his back were turned and he far away. 

The reader now knows more than William Harrod 
knew of the state of his own affairs, on the afternoon 
I when he made his last good-byes to the two ladies, 
and, with King and Richards and Adams, turned 
back to join the captain on the expedition from 
1 which they had been now for more than a fortnight 
parted. Of these men, Harrod had learned early to 
distrust Richards. He seemed to him to be himself 
distrustful, morose, and sulky without cause; and 
j Harrod did not believe him to be a true man. Of 
! the others he had formed no judgment, for better or 
worse, except that they were like the average of 
Western adventurers, glad to spend a winter on 
ground which they had never seen before. He had 
been a little surprised that all of them had assented, 
without question or murmur, to so long a separation 
from the main party of hunters. 

He was more surprised that, now this separation 
1 was so near an end, none of the men showed any 
interest in the prospect of reunion. They rode on, 
for the four days’ forced march which brought them 
back to that famous camp where Inez had lost her- 
, self, — a party ill at ease. Whenever Harrod tried 
to lead the conversation to the business of the winter, 





234 Philip Nolans Friends; 

it flagged. The men dropped that subject as if it 
were a hot coal. For himself, poor Harrod gladly 
turned back in his own thoughts to every word that 
had been spoken, to every look that had been looked, 
as he and she rode over this road before. If the men 
did not want to talk about mustangs and corrals, he 
certainly did not. And so, as they brought down 
five days of ordinary travel so as to compass 
them in little more than three, it was but a silent 
journey. 

Of such silence, the mystery appeared, when they 
had discussed the jerked venison of their noonday 
meal at camp at the same point as that where Eunice 
watched and wept. 

To go to Nolan’s rendezvous from this point, 
they would have to follow up the valley of the 
Brassos River, known to the Indians as the Tockan- 
hono. The trail would not be as easy as the old 
San Antonio road which they had been following, 
nor could they expect to make as rapid progress 
upon it. But, at the outside, Nolan was not two 
hundred miles above them, perhaps not one hundred 
miles. With the horses they had under them, this 
distance would be soon achieved. 

As the men washed down the venison with the last 
drop of the day’s ration of whiskey, Harrod gave his 
commands for the evening, in that interrogative or 
suggestive form in which a wise officer commands 
free' and independent hunters. 

“ Had we not better hold on here till daybreak?” 
he said. “ That will give the horses a better chance 
at this feed. We will start as soon as we can see our 


or, Show your Passports 235 

hands in the morning; and by night we shall have 
made as much as if we had started now.” 

None of the men said a w r ord — a little to Harrod’s 
surprise, though he was used to their sulkiness. 

“ Well,” said he, “ if you want to play cards, you 
must play by yourselves this evening. I shall take a 
nap now, and then I have my journal to write up; 
and Mr. Nolan wants me to take the latitude here as 
soon as the stars are up. So good luck to you 
all.” 

Upon this, King — who was perhaps the most easy 
speaker of the party—screwed himself up, or was 
put up by the others, to say, — 

“Cap’n, I may as well tell you that we’s going 
home. There won’t be no horses cotched up yonder 
this year. Them blasted Greasers is too many for 
Cap’n Nolan or for you; and we sha’n’t get into 
that trap. We uns is going home; ’n’, if you’s wise, 
you goes too.” 

Harrod stared at first, without speaking. This was 
the mystery of all this sulky silence, was it? And 
this Mordecai Richards was at the bottom of it! 
Harrod was too angry to speak for a moment. Be¬ 
fore he did speak, he had mastered that first wish to 
give the man a black eye, or to choke him for a few 
minutes, as fit recompense for such treachery. He 
did master it, and succeeded in pretending this was a 
half-joke, and in trying persuasion. 

They battled it for half an hour. Harrod coaxed, 
he shamed, he threatened; and, at the end, he saw 
the traitors saddle and pack their horses, and they 
rode off without a word of good-by, leaving Harrod 





236 Philip Nolans Friends; 

alone, as he had left Eunice Perry on that spot, only 
that Harrod had no loyal Ransom. 

“There is no use crying for spilled milk,” he said, 
as if it were a comfort to him to speak one clean and 
strong word after paddling in the ditch of those 
men’s lies and cowardice. “ Half an hour of a good 
siesta lost in coaxing cowards and convicting liars ! ” 

And on this the good fellow threw himself on the 
ground again, drew a buffalo-robe over his feet and 
knees, adjusted his head to his mind on a perch 
which he took from his saddle, and in ten seconds 
was asleep; so resolute was his own self-command, 
and so meekly did wayward thought, even when most 
rampant, obey him when he gave the order. He 
slept his appointed hour. He woke, and indulged 
himself in pleasant memories. He went down to the 
bayou. The moccasin-tracks of Inez’s little foot 
were not yet all erased. He crept out upon the log of 
cottonwood; he peeped through the opening in the 
underbrush. He came back to the false trail which 
she had followed. He worked along in the effort to 
reproduce her wanderings. As night closed in, he 
tried to fancy that he was where the girl was; and 
he paced up and down fifty times, as he indulged 
himself in the memory of her courage. Then he 
came up to his post, took the altitude of the North 
Star and of Algol and Deneb, as the captain had bid¬ 
den him. By the light of his camp-fire he made an 
entry in his journal longer than usual. Let it be not 
written here whether there were there, or were not, 
a few halting verses, between the altitude of Mizar 
and that of Deneb. 


or f Show your Passports 237 

Before ten o’clock the fire was burning low, and 
the fearless commander was dreaming of Inez and of 
home. 

But it is not every night that passes so smoothly 
for him; and it is not every evening that he can write 
verses or enter altitudes so serenely. 

The next day, with no guide, — and, indeed, need¬ 
ing none but the indications of an Indian trail, — the 
brave fellow worked his way prosperously toward his 
chief; and at night, after he had taken his altitudes 
and written up his journal, he lay by his camp-fire 
again, with the well-pleased hope that two or three 
more such days might bring him to the captain. At 
the outside, five would be enough, unless all plans 
were changed. On such thoughts he slept. 

He woke to find his hands tightly held, — to hear 
the grunts and commands of two stout Comanches 
who held him, — to struggle to his feet between them, 
with daylight enough to see that he was in the power 
of a dozen of them. His packs were already open, 
and were surrounded by the hungry and thirsty cor¬ 
morants. One was draining his whiskey-flask. Two 
or three were trying experiments with his sextant. 
The chief of the party had already appropriated 
his rifle; and as Harrod turned to look for the pre¬ 
cious pack, on which his head had rested, he saw 
that that also was in the hands of the savages, and 
that one of them was already fighting with another 
on the questions which should be possessor of a 
cigar-case, and which should be satisfied with the 
diary. 

This misfortune of the young Kentuckian will 







238 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

explain to the reader what was a mystery to Philip 
Nolan when he wrote the letter which we have 
read, — why Harrod and the rest had not rejoined 
him within a fortnight, more or less, after he had 
received their letters by Blackburn. 


CHAPTER XIX 

THE WARNING 

“ Before the clerk must bend 
Full many a warrior grim, 

And to the corner wend, 

Although it please not him.” 

Heinrich Knaust. 

Philip Nolan’s letter to Eunice had not reached 
her on that morning in March when Ma-ry had sent 
away the joint letter to him, of whose fate the reader 
has been apprised. He had no prizes to offer to the 
Carankawa squaw to whom he intrusted it; and her 
occasions of travel were so varied, and her encamp¬ 
ments were so long, that it was many months before 
Eunice Perry received it. 

She was one of the Indios reducidos, — that is, the 
Indians who could make the sign of the cross, — and 
not one of the Indios bravos , who were redskins with¬ 
out that accomplishment. But her “ reduction ” had 
not yet brought her to that more difficult stage of re¬ 
ligion in which people tell the truth, or do what they 
promise to do. 

Meanwhile the winter wore away, — not unpleas¬ 
antly to the young leader and his party. He had 


or, Show your Passports 239 

characterized them fitly enough in that letter. They 
could fight over their cards as hotly as they would 
have fought for a king’s crown; and the next day, in 
the wild adventures of the chase, the man who had, 
the last night, sworn deadly vengeance because a two 
of clubs was not an ace, would risk his life freely to 
save the man whom he had then threatened. The 
moon of cold meat, as the Indians call the tenth 
month from March, crept by; and through the 
month the young hunters had no lack of hot sup¬ 
plies every night. The moon of chestnuts followed; 
and they were not reduced to roasted chestnuts. 
The moon of walnuts followed; and they had wal¬ 
nuts enough, but they had much more. They 
hunted well, they slept well, they woke with the 
sun. They hardly tired of this life of adventure; 
but they were all in readiness, so soon as the 
spring flood should a little subside, to take up 
their line of march with their frisky wealth to Natchi¬ 
toches and Orleans. 

All fears of the Spanish outposts had long since 
died away. The only question which ever amazed 
the camp was the question which the last chapter 
solved for the reader, — what had become of Harrod 
and of his companions? There was not a man of 
them who really liked Richards; but they knew 
nothing to make them distrust King and Adams ; and 
of course every man knew that William Harrod was 
another Philip Nolan. 

Things were in this pass, when, as they returned 
from the day’s hunting to the corral one afternoon, 
they found sitting by the cooks, the home-guard, 






240 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

and the camp-fire, the five Indians of whom Crookeo 
Feather was the spokesman, whom the reader saw 
last when they left the Guadaloupe River five days 
before, with such benediction as the Franciscan 
fathers had given them. 

Crooked Feather rose at once, laid aside his pipe, 
and presented to Nolan a little silver-mounted hunt¬ 
ing-whip, with an address which Nolan scarcely un¬ 
derstood. The man spoke rapidly, and with much 
excitement. 

Nolan controlled him a little, by praising him and 
the whip, and giving his hand freely to every mem¬ 
ber of the red party, and then persuaded Crooked 
Feather to begin again. He asked him to speak 
slowly, explaining that, while his heart was right 
to the Twowokanies, his ears were somewhat deaf 
when he heard their language. 

Crooked Feather began again, and this time with 
gesture enough to make clear his words. Nolan 
immediately called Blackburn; and by an easy 
movement he led the Indian away from the other 
men, who were already hobnobbing with the red¬ 
skins of lesser rank or lesser volubility. 

“ Blackburn, see and hear what he says. He gives 
me this riding-switch from old Ransom. Ransom is 
no fool, as you know, Blackburn ; and this means 
simply that he thinks we should be going, and 
going quickly. The man left Antonio only on 
Tuesday; he saw the ladies Monday; and early 
Tuesday morning Ransom came with that girl they 
call the White Hawk, bade him bring me this whip, 
and promised him no end of plunder if he returned 


or, Show your Passports 241 

in twelve days. Now, they had some reason for 
sending the redskins.” 

“They have sent something besides the whip,” 
said Blackburn; and he turned to the impassive 
Crooked Feather, and with equal impassivity said 
to him, “ Give me what else the young squaw sent 
to you.” 

Then for the first time, and as if he had forgotten 
it, or as if it were a trifle among braves, the Crooked 
Feather crossed to his packs, loosened and brought 
to the others the parcel of skins, dusty and defaced 
i by the journey. 

“Crooked Feather brought these skins also. 
There are six skins, which the white squaw, whom 
| the white-head father took from the Apaches, sends 
| to the chief of the long-knives.” 

“You lie!” said Blackburn, as impassive as be¬ 
fore, and with as little sign of displeasure. “There 
are but five skins. The Crooked Feather has stolen 
one.” 

“ There are six skins,” said the savage, holding up 
one hand, and one finger of the other; and he ex¬ 
plained that he had himself opened the parcel, 
counted the skins, and folded them again. He 
showed his own memorandum, — an open hand in 
1 red, and a red finger, — on the other side of the 
outer skin. 

Even the impassive face of an Indian gave way to 
a surprise which could hardly be feigned when 
he also counted the skins and there were but 
five. 

“ Perhaps he is lying, Blackburn; but I think not. 

16 









242 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

Do not let the other boys hear you, but go and talk 
with the other redskins, and find out what you can. 
I will play with him here. You see Ransom never 
sent that bale of skins all the way here with nothing 
in it. Bring me our long pipe first.” 

Blackburn brought the pipe lighted. Nolan 
spread one of the skins, and invited Crooked 
Feather to sit on it. He sat on another himself. 
He threw one on his knees. He threw another 
on the Feather’s knees. He drew a few whiffs of 
smoke, and gave the pipe to the other. They re¬ 
newed this ceremony three or four times. Then 
Nolan opened his private flask of whiskey, and 
drank from it. He offered it to the other, who did 
the same, not with the same moderation which his 
host had shown. After these ceremonies, the white 
man said gravely, without even looking the other in 
the face,— 

“ The white squaw and the gray-haired chief gave 
to my brother another token. I am ready to receive 
that from the Crooked Feather.” 

The Crooked Feather, who had till this moment 
conceived the hope that he might retain the little 
prayer-book for a medicine and benediction for 
himself and his line forever, gave way at the mo¬ 
ment, took it from his pouch, and gave it to Nolan. 

“The chief of the long-knives says well. The old 
chief and the white squaw gave me this medicine for 
the chief of the long-knives.” 

Nolan cut, only too eagerly, the thongs which 
bound the missal-book, and opened it. He wholly 
concealed his surprise when he saw what it was. 


or, Show your Passports 243 

Rapidly he turned every page to make sure that 
no note was concealed within them. He placed 
it in his own pouch, drew three more whiffs from 
the pipe, and waited till the Crooked Feather 
did the same. He pretended to drink from the 
flask again; and the Feather did so, without pre¬ 
tence or disguise. 

Nolan then said,— 

“ The white squaw and the white chief gave my 
brother another medicine. They gave him a white 
medicine, like the bark of a canoe-birch folded.” 

He looked, as he spoke, at a distant tree, as though 

1 there were no Crooked Feather in the world. 

Crooked Feather, looking also across at the camp¬ 
fire, as though there were no Nolan in the world, 
said, — 

“ The chief of the long-knives lies. I have given 
to him all the tokens and all the medicines which the 
white squaw gave me, or the white-haired white chief. 
Let the chief of the long-knives give his token to the 
Crooked Feather. The Crooked Feather will give it 
to the white squaw before seven suns have set. The 
white squaw will give the Crooked Feather more 
sugar than a bear can eat in a day.” 

This dream of heaven was put in words without 
a gesture or a smile. 

“ It is well,” said Nolan quietly. “ Let us come to 
the camp-fire. The Crooked Feather has ridden far 
to-day. My young men have turkey-meat and deer- 
meat waiting for him.” 

They parted at the fire, and in a moment more 
Nolan was in consultation with Blackburn. 







244 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Blackburn told him what he had drawn from the 
others without difficulty. They had confirmed all 
that the Crooked Feather had said. They had added 
what he would have added had he been asked the 
history of their march. In the first place, they knew 
nothing of Harrod or of the other lost men. They 
had not long been camping by Antonio, nor had they 
any knowledge of the existence of such a party as 
his. In the second place, they had carefully de¬ 
scribed Miss Eunice, Miss Inez, the White Hawk, and 
Ransom, with precision of details such as none but 
Indians would be capable of. There could be no 
doubt, in the mind of either Nolan or Blackburn, that 
on the very last Tuesday they had left their camp by 
the river, and had started with the parcel of furs, the 
packet, and the riding-whip. That the parcel con¬ 
tained six skins when they started, Blackburn was 
sure. The men all said so. They had opened it, 
and counted them. Nor did they even now know 
that its tale was not full. Blackburn was sure that, 
if Crooked Feather had tampered with it, they had 
not. Nolan was equally sure that the chief had not. 
He had, indeed, no motive to do so. His only object 
must be to discharge his mission thoroughly, if he 
discharged it at all. Had he wanted to steal a 
wretched antelope-skin, why, he would have stolen 
the whole pack. 

Blackburn thought he gave more light when he 
told his chief the story of the encampment by the 
Guadaloupe River; and here Nolan was at one with 
him. If a Franciscan father plied them all with 
brandy, he had his reasons. If he plied them with 




or, Show your Passports 245 

brandy, they all slept soundly, and kept no watch 
that night. If he were curious about their enterprise, 
he would inform himself of it. 

“ Blackburn, on the other skin there was a picture¬ 
writing which told us just what we want to know.” 

“ That’s what I say too,” said Blackburn promptly. 

“ Blackburn, in this parcel, with this little prayer- 
book, was a note which told us just what we want to 
know.” 

“ That’s what I say.” 

“ And that fellow with a long brown nightgown, 
tied up with a halter round his waist, has got it.” 

So saying, Nolan for the last time turned over the 
book of hours, and Blackburn turned to leave his 
pensive chief. 

“ Halloo ! Blackburn, come back ! ” 

And Nolan led him to a secluded shelter, where 
they were out of ear-shot or eye-shot. 

“ See here, and here, and here, and here; ” and he 
pointed one by one to the four ornamented pages of 
the prayer-book. 

“ Miss Perry was as much afraid of these night¬ 
gown men as I am. She has sent her message in 
writing they do not learn at Rome.” 

Sure enough: in miniature work quite as elegant 
as many a priest has wrought in, Eunice had substi¬ 
tuted for the original illustrations of the book a 
series on vellum which much better answered her 
present purpose. The pictures were all Bible pic¬ 
tures; and the figures were drawn in the quaint style 
of the original. But every scene was a scene of part¬ 
ing, and illustrated the beginning of a retreat. 




246 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Here was Abraham going up out of Egypt, very 
rich in cattle. Strange to say, the cattle were all 
horses, and in Abraham’s turban was a long cardinal 
feather. “ Do you remember, Blackburn, the feather 
I wore the day I bade the ladies good-by?” 

Then here was Lot and his troop turning their 
backs on the plain. Once more the preponderance 
of horses was remarkable; and once more a brilliant 
red feather waved in Lot’s helmet. 

Blackburn began to be interested. The next pic¬ 
ture was of Gideon crossing the Jordan in his retreat. 
There were spoils of the Midianites, and especially 
horses; and in Gideon’s head waved still the red 
feather. 

By and by Ezra appeared, leading the Israelites 
over the Euphrates. Horses again outnumbered all 
the cattle, and Ezra again wore a red feather; but the 
chief next to Ezra, just of his height and figure, wore 
a crest of fur. 

“ See there, Blackburn! She thinks Harrod is 
here! That is his squirrel-tail.” 

They turned on, but there were no more pictures. 
Both men looked back upon these four; and it was 
then that Nolan’s eye caught the figures in black- 
letter at the bottom of the first,— 

lExcrti. xu. 31 , 32 ; ©eut. ft. 9 . 

“ Halloo, Blackburn! what is this?” cried he. 
“ There is nothing about Abraham in Deuteronomy, 
nor in Exodus either.” 

In a moment Blackburn had brought to his chief, 
from a little box at the head of his sleeping-bunk, the 


or, Show your Passports 247 

Bible which accompanied him in his journeys. A 
moment more had found the warning texts, — 

“ Rise up, and get you forth from among my people, both ye 
and the children of Israel; and go, serve the Lord as ye have 
said. 

“ Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and 
be gone; and bless me also.” 

“ And the Lord said unto me, Distress not the Moabites, 
neither contend with them in battle ; for I will not give thee of 
their land for a possession.” 

Nolan read aloud to Blackburn; and then, as he 
looked for more messages, he said, — 

“ It is all of a piece with old Ransom’s token. They 
think the country is too hot for us, and they mean to 
put us on our guard. See, Blackburn, what comes 
next.” 

Under Lot and his party were the letters,— 

fogj). 11. I, 2 . 

“ Lucky the Franciscan blackleg did not know Lot 
was not cousin of Joshua,” growled Nolan. 

He turned up the text to read,— 

“And it came to pass when all the kings which were on this 
side Jordan, in the hills, and in the valleys, . . . heard thereof; 

“ That they gathered themselves together, to fight with 
Joshua and with Israel, with one accord.” 

Under the next pictures were the letters,— 

Jttbrp it. Yl ♦ 

And the interpretation proved to be, — 







248 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

“ Then Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, 
Let me, I pray thee, pass through thy land; but the king of 
Edom would not hearken thereto.” 

“ This is plain talk, Blackburn,” said the chief after 
a moment’s pause. 

“Yes, captain; and do you see? — ” 

The man took the book carefully from his chief, 
and showed him, far in the distance of each picture 
of the four, a three-domed cathedral with three 
crosses. 

“Them’s the crosses of Chihuahua; I’ve heard on 
’em hundreds of times. Has not thee, captain?” 

“ Heard of them! I have seen them. You are 
right, Blackburn. It is from Chihuahua that our 
enemy is coming, and from Chihuahua that we must 
look for him. Now what is this? ” 

And he turned once more to the picture of Ezra 
with his cardinal. The warning texts were, — 

lE^ra but. 10 ? ISioti. tfr. 8. 

“ And of the sons of Shelomith; the son of Josiphiah, and 
with him an hundred and threescore males.” 

“ I do not care what his name is, Blackburn; but, 
if he has a hundred and sixty Spanish lancers of the 
male sort after him, they are too many for us. What 
is her other text? ” 

“And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, 
neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will 
believe the voice of the latter sign.” 

“ I should think so,” said Nolan sadly or dully, as 
Blackburn might choose to think, — “I should think 




or. Show your Passports 249 

so, unless they wanted to be marched, every man of 
them, into the mines at New Mexico. 

“ Blackburn, an hour after sunrise to-morrow we 
will be gone.” 

“ I say so too,” replied the subordinate, by no means 
ill pleased. 

“ Get the redskins well off to-night. We will say 
nothing to the boys till they are well gone.” 

Accordingly a grand farewell feast was improvised 
for Crooked Feather. The very scanty stores of 
whiskey which were left in the hunters’ provisions 
were largely drawn upon. A pipe of peace was 
smoked; and Crooked Feather and his men were 
started on their return with haste which might have 
seemed suspicious, had they been more sober. 

Perhaps it seemed suspicious as it was. 

Crooked Feather bore with him the “ medicine- 
paper” which he coveted, the display of which to 
White Hawk, to the white-haired chief, or to the 
white lady, to either or to all, would produce the 
much-coveted and well-earned sugar. 

CHAPTER XX 

A TERTULTA 

“ Come to our fete, and bring with thee 
Thy newest, best embroidery; 

Bring thy best lace, and bring thy rings: 

Bring, child, in short, thy prettiest things.” 

After Moore. 

Crooked Feather was not false to his promise; 
and on this occasion he met neither medicine-man nor 




250 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

ghostly father to hinder him on his way. On the thir¬ 
teenth day from that on which he started, he came in 
sight of the crosses of Antonio. He found his own 
party encamped not far distant from the place where 
he had left them. No sign of surprise or affection 
greeted the return of the party. They swung them¬ 
selves sullenly from their horses, and gave them 
to the care of the women. Crooked Feather satisfied 
himself that neither of the three whites who were 
authorized to receive his token had come out to 
meet him. He was too taciturn and too proud to 
confess his disappointment,— for disappointment he 
really felt. He solaced himself by devouring a bit of 
the mesquit, — a rabbit which he tore limb from limb 
with his fingers. He then bade his wife bring out 
another horse; and, without his companions this 
time, he rode into the Presidio with his token. 

He gave a wide berth to every man who wore a 
black coat or cassock. His memories of the head¬ 
ache which followed his last debauch were too fresh, 
and the shame he felt at being outwitted by the 
scalped fathers was too great for him to trust him¬ 
self to such guides again. 

Lounging in part of Major Barelo’s quarters, he 
found old Ransom. 

“ Back agen, be ye? ” said the old man with undis¬ 
guised surprise. “ Come into the yard with me. 
Yarg! Go ask the Senora Perry if she will have the 
kindness to come down.” 

The savage swung himself from his beast; and 
Ransom bade an attendant idler secure him, while he 
led Crooked Feather into the more private court- 


or. Show your Passports 251 

[ yard. In a minute Eunice appeared. The two girls 
were not with her. 

No interpreter was needed, however. The savage 

was too eager to be well done with his disagreeable 

expedition. In a moment he produced the tobacco- 

j pouch which Nolan had given him. In a moment 

more Ransom had found the secret of its fastening. 

£>» 

| and had opened it. In a moment more Eunice had 
torn open the letter, and had read it. 


Philip Nolan to Eunice Perry. 

March 2T. 

Thank you a thousand times for your warning. Fortu- 
I nately you are in time. A rascally priest stole your letter, 
I and whatever was on an antelope-skin. But I have the 
I prayer-book, and I have Ransom’s whip. Thank the old 
I fellow for us. We are off before daylight; and I send this 
1 red-skin off now, that he may not see our trail. Good-by, 
| and God bless you all! P. N. 


“ God be praised, indeed ! ” said Eunice, as she 
read the letter a second time, this time reading aloud 
to Ransom, but in her lowest tones, that not even the 
| walls might hear. “ God be praised ! This is good 
! news indeed. See the man has his sugar, Ransom; ” 
and then she turned, gave her hand to the savage, 
smiled, and thanked him. With a moment more she 
was in her own room, and had summoned the two 
girls to share her delight and triumph. 

The letter was read to Inez, and it was translated 
to the White Plawk. Then Inez took it, and read it 
herself, and turned it most carefully over. It was 
only after a pause that she said, “Are you sure there 






252 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

was no other letter, that there was nothing more?” 
And then Eunice wondered too, and sent to recall 
Ransom. There might have been something else in 
the tobacco-pouch. 

No ! there was nothing more in the tobacco-pouch. 
Inez even clipped out the lining of it with her scis¬ 
sors. There was nothing more there; there had 
been nothing more there. 

None the less was Inez resolved that she would 
ride out with the White Hawk the next morning, and 
have an interview with the Crooked Feather. The 
Crooked Feather could, at the least, tell whom he 
had found at the encampment. 

And then the three ladies began their preparations 
for the tertulia of the evening, with more animation 
and joyfulness than they had felt for many, many 
days. 

“ What in the world shall I say to your horrible 
Mr. Lonsdale, aunt, if he should take it into his grave 
old island head to ask me what makes me so 
happy?” 

“ What, indeed? ” said Eunice. “We must not tell 
him any lies. You must change the subject bravely. 
You must ask him what are the favorite dances in 
London.” 

“ Eunice, I will ask him if his old Queen Charlotte 
dances the bolero. I will. I should like to show 
him that I know him perfectly well, and through and 
through.” 

“I wish I did,” said Eunice, stopping in her toilet, 
and looking at Inez almost anxiously. 

“Wish you did? Then I will tell you in one min- 



or. Show your Passports 253 

ate. He is a hateful old spy of a hateful old king. 
And what he is here for, I do not see. What was 
the use of our beating the redcoats and Hessians all 
out of our country, if, after it is all over, we are to 
have these spies coming back to look round and see 
if they have not forgotten something? ” 

“ Don’t talk too loud, pussy,” said her aunt, taking 
up the comb again. “ What would General Herrara 
say if he heard you call this your country, and if you 
told him you thought he ought to turn all travelling 
Englishmen out of it? ” 

“ Travelling fiddlesticks ! ” cried the impetuous 
girl. “ Do you tell me that an English gentleman, 
like dear Sir Charles Grandison, who was a gentle¬ 
man, has nothing better to do than to cross the 
ocean and come all the way up to this corner of the 
world to pay his respects to the Senora Valois, and 
to dance a minuet with me?” 

“ He might be worse employed, I think,” said 
Aunt Eunice, catching and kissing the impetuous 
girl, whose cheeks glowed as her eyes blazed with 
her excitement; “and I believe dear Sir Charles’s 
grandson would say so too, if he were here. Come, 
come, come! Mary is wondering what you are 
storming about, and all your pantomime will never 
explain to her. Come., come, come! How nice it is 
to be able to go to a party without setting foot out 
of doors! ” 

It was indeed true, that, by one of the corridor or 
cloister arrangements which gave a certain Moorish 
aspect to the little military station, there was a pas¬ 
sage, quite “ practicable,” through which, without 






254 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

putting foot to the earth, the three ladies passed to 
the saloons of Madame de Valois, where the brilliant 
party of the evening was gathering. The home of 
this lady was in the city of Chihuahua; but, fortu¬ 
nately for our ladies, in this eventful winter she was 
making a long visit at San Antonio. She had chosen 
this evening to give a brilliant party, by way of return¬ 
ing the civilities which she had received from the 
ladies of the Presidio. 

All three of the American ladies were welcomed 
with cordial and even enthusiastic courtesy. The 
White Hawk was quite used, by this time, to the 
pretty French dresses in which Inez was so fond of 
arraying her. She could speak but little English, 
less French, and still less Spanish; and she could 
dance but little English, less French, and less Span¬ 
ish. But the minuet, as has been intimated, was the 
common property of the world; and Inez had spent 
time enough in compelling Ma-ry to master its intri¬ 
cacies, to be rewarded by no small measure of suc¬ 
cess. She said, herself, that Ma-ry’s mistakes were 
as pretty as other people’s victories. For the rest, 
in all civilizations, the language of the ballroom re¬ 
quires but a limited vocabulary, so there be only fans 
and eyes to supply the place of words. 

Inez had not been wrong in suspecting that she 
should come to a trial of wits with Mr. Lonsdale. 
“ See what he will get out of me,” she whispered dis¬ 
dainfully to her aunt, as Mr. Lonsdale was seen bear¬ 
ing down to cut her out from the protection of Miss 
Perry’s batteries. 

“And what is your news from home, Miss Inez?” 


or. Show your Passports 255 

This was his first question after they had taken 
their places for the dance. 

“ Oh, we feel that we bring home with us! It 
would be quite home were only papa here, and my 
brother.” 

Thus did Inez reply. 

“ Indeed, you are more fortunate than the rest of 
us. We cannot carry our household gods with us so 
easily.” 

Inez bit her lip that she need not say, “ Why do 
you come at all if you do not like to be here?” But 
she said nothing. 

Mr. Lonsdale had to begin again, — a thing which 
was then, as it is now, difficult to men of his nation 
engaged in conversation. 

“ I meant to ask what is your news from the United 
States. Is Mr. Jefferson the President? or does Pres¬ 
ident Adams continue for another term of office?” 

Inez was indignant with the man, because he had 
not in any way thrown himself open to her repartee. 
The question was perfectly proper, perfectly harm¬ 
less ; and it was one, alas! which she could not 
answer. 

“ I did not know what to say to him,” she said 
afterward to her aunt. “ So I told him the truth.” 

What she did say was this: — 

“ I do not know, and I wish I did, Mr. Lonsdale.” 

“And which candidate do you vote for, Miss 
Perry? ” 

“The hateful creature! ” This was Inez’s inward 
ejaculation. “ He means to draw out of me the 
material for his next despatch to the tyrant. Sooner 





256 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

shall he draw out my tongue, or my heart itself from 
my bosom. ” 

Fortunately, however, it would have been difficult 
for Inez to tell which her predilections were. She 
answered, still with the craft of honesty, — 

“ Oh, papa thinks President Adams is too hard on 
our French friends. For me, I am a Massachusetts 
girl, and I cannot bear to have a Massachusetts 
president defeated; and then, Mr. Lonsdale, Colonel 
Freeman says that Colonel Burr is a very handsome 
man, and a very gallant soldier. He fought at 
Monmouth, Mr. Lonsdale: did you see him there, 
perhaps ?” 

And here the impudent girl looked up mali¬ 
ciously, well satisfied that she had in one word im¬ 
plied that Lonsdale was at least forty years old, and 
that he had turned his back in battle. 

He was well pleased, on his part, and amused with 
the rencontre. 

“ I did not see him at Monmouth,” he said, with 
more animation than she had ever seen him show 
before. “I do not remember: I had not begun my 
diary then. I think I must have been knocking ring- 
taws against an old brick wall we had in the garden. 
But I have seen Colonel Burr. I have seen him take 
Miss Schuyler down the dance, and he did dance 
very elegantly, Miss Perry.” 

“Pray where was that?” said Inez; and then she 
was enraged with herself that she should have be¬ 
trayed any interest in the spy’s conversation. 

“ Oh! it was at a very brilliant party in New York. 
Colonel Burr seemed to me to be a favorite among 


or, Show your Passports 257 

ladies, and I see you think so too. But I think that 
even in America they have no votes.” 

“ I was even with him, aunty. I said that in New 
Jersey they had votes, and that Colonel Burr came 
from New Jersey.” 

“You little goose!,” said Eunice, when Inez made 
this confession. “ What in the world had that to do 
with it? ” 

“Well, aunty, it had nothing to do with it; but it 
was very important to prove that Mr. Lonsdale was 
always in the wrong.” 

And in such a spirit Miss Inez’s conversation with 
poor Lonsdale went forward, till this particular dance 
was done. 

The pretty and lively girl was demanded by other 
partners, and she had, indeed, wasted quite as much 
of her wit, not to say of her impertinence, as she 
chose, upon the man whom she called a “ British 
spy,” and who, let it be confessed, added to other 
mortal sins that of being at least three and thirty 
years of age, and that of dancing as badly as 
the First Consul himself. Inez did not pretend to 
disguise her satisfaction, as he led her back to her 
duenna, and she was permitted to give her hand to 
some ensign of two and twenty. 

Lonsdale turned, amused more than discomfited, 
to Eunice. 

“ Miss Perry will not forgive me for the sin of sins.” 

“ And what is that? ” said Eunice, laughing. 

“ Oh, you know very well! The sin of sins is 
that I am born the subject of King George, and that 
at her behest I do not renounce all allegiance to him, 
17 








258 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

whenever I pray to be delivered from all the snares 
of the Devil.” 

Eunice laughed again. 

“ I hope you pardon something to the spirit of a 
girl who is born under a sceptre much more heavy 
than that of the ‘ best of kings.’ ” 

Lonsdale might take “ best of kings ” as he chose. 
It was the cant phrase by which King George was 
called by poets-laureate and others of their kidney, 
till a time long after this. 

“ Oh! I can pardon anything to seventeen, when 
seventeen is as frank, not to say as piquant, as it is 
yonder. Miss Inez does not let her admirers com¬ 
plain of her insincerity.” 

“No! She has faults enough, I suppose; though 
I love her too well to judge her harshly enough, I 
know. But, among those faults, no one would count 
a want of frankness.” 

“ Still,” said Lonsdale, hesitating now, and ap¬ 
proaching his subject with an Englishman’s rather 
clumsy determination to say the thing he hates to 
say, and to be done with it, — “ still it seems to me a 
little queer that Miss Inez, can forgive all enemies 
save those of her own blood. After all, it is English 
blood; her language is the English language, and 
her faith is the English faith. Why should she speak 
to an Englishman with a bitterness with which no 
French girl speaks, and no Spanish girl? We have 
fought the French, and we have fought the Spaniards, 
harder and longer than we ever fought your people; 
and I may say,” said he, laughing now, “ we have 
punished them worse.” 


or. Show your Passports 259 

“Oh! Mr. Lonsdale,” said Eunice, who would 
gladly have parried a subject so delicate, “ do not be 
so sensitive. Pardon something to ‘ sweet seventeen,’ 
and something to the exaggeration of a girl who has 
never set foot in her own country.” 

“ What do you mean? ” 

“ I mean that this poor child is an exaggerated 
American. She was born under the flag of Spain. 
She has heard of the excellencies of Washington and 
Adams and Franklin. She has never seen the little¬ 
nesses of their countrymen. She has heard of the 
trials of her father’s friends. She has never seen the 
pettiness of daily politics. She wants to show her 
patriotism somewhere, and she shows it by her rail¬ 
lery of an Englishman. I trust, indeed, that she has 
not been rude, Mr. Lonsdale.” 

“ Indeed, indeed, your pupil dpes you all credit 
and honor, Miss Perry. Miss Inez could not be 
rude, be assured. But it is not of her only that I am 
speaking. Remember, — nay, you do not know,— 
but I have met your fair countrywomen in their 
homes, in Boston, in New York, in Philadelphia. I 
have met them, I have danced with them, as with 
Miss Inez on this outpost. Always it is the same. 
Always courtesy, — hospitality if you please, — but 
always defiance. France, Spain, poor Portugal even, 

•— nay, a stray Dutchman, — they welcome cordially. 
But an Englishman, — because he speaks their lan¬ 
guage, is it? — because he prays to God, and not 
to God’s mother, is it?”—and this Lonsdale said 
reverently,— “an Englishman must be taught, be¬ 
tween two movements of the minuet, that George III. 




260 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

is the worst of tyrants, and that a red coat is the 
disguise of a monster. Why is this, Miss Perry? 
As I say, no French girl speaks so to an English 
traveller; no Spanish girl speaks so. Yet our arms 
have triumphed over France and Spain; and — hear 
me confess it — they have been humbled, as they 
never were humbled elsewhere, by our own children. 
Is that any reason why our children should hate us?” 

It was a pretty sight to see Eunice Perry look now 
timid and now brave. It was a pretty sight to see 
her look him full in the face, and then look down 
upon the ground without speaking. She tried to 
speak, and she stopped. She hesitated once and again. 
Then, after a flush, the blood wholly left her cheek. 
But she looked him square in the eye, and said,— 

“You are frank with me, Mr. Lonsdale: let me be 
frank with you. Surely I can be frank,— it is best 
that I should be. For it is not of you that I speak: 
it is of your country, or of your king. Will you re¬ 
member, then, that you introduced this subject, and 
not I?” 

Lonsdale was startled by her seriousness, though 
he had been serious. But he said, — 

“ Certainly, certainly: pray say what is on your 
heart. Whatever you say, I deserve. You parried 
my questions as long as you could.” 

“Surely I did. The conversation is none of my 
seeking,” said Eunice, really proudly. 

Then she paused, and looked again upon the 
ground; but, when she had collected herself, she 
looked him fairly in the face, as before. 

“ Mr. Lonsdale, when you fight France, you fight 


261 


or, Show your Passports 

her navies; when you fought Spain, you fought 
her armies. No French girl has seen an English 
soldier on French soil since Cressy and Agincourt. 
But, when you fought us, you fought us in our homes. 
Nay, where we had no armies, your cruisers and 
squadrons could easily land soldiers on our shores, 
and did. Where we had no forts, it was easiest to 
burn our villages. From Falmouth (you do not know 
where Falmouth is) to Savannah (you do not know 
where that is), there are not fifty miles of our coast 
where an English cruiser or an English fleet has not 
landed English troops. There is not a region of my 
country fifty miles wide, but has seen an inroad of 
marauding English seamen or soldiers. Your jour¬ 
nals laughed at your admirals for campaigns which 
ended in stealing sheep. But, Mr. Lonsdale, because 
my father’s sheep were stolen by Admiral Graves’s 
fleet, I, who talk with you, have walked barefoot with 
these feet for twelve months at a time in my girlhood. 
Nay, Mr. Lonsdale, I have seen my mother’s ears 
bleeding, because an English marine dragged her 
ear-rings from her ears. What French girl lives who 
can tell you such a story? — what Spanish girl? 
There is not a county in America, but a thousand 
girls, whom you meet as you meet Inez, could tell 
you such; would tell you such, but that our nations 
are now, thank God ! at peace, and you have come 
among them as a stranger who is a friend. They do 
not tell the story. It is only I who tell the story. 
But they remember the thing. Pardon me, Mr. 
Lonsdale. I did not want to say this; and yet per¬ 
haps it is better that it is said.” 





262 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“Better!” said the Englishman; “a thousand 
times better. It is the truth. And really — I would 
not, — really, you know, — I would not, I could not,* 
have pressed, had I thought for a moment that I 
should give you pain.” 

“I am quite sure of that,” said Eunice simply; 
and, with an effort, she changed the subject. But, 
after a beginning like this, the Englishman could not, 
even if he would, bring round her talk to the subject 
of Philip Nolan and his hunters. 


CHAPTER XXI 

THE MAN I HATE 

“ But Wisdom, peevish and cross-grained, 

Must be opposed to be sustained.” 

Matt. Prior. 

But Inez had no chance for further colloquy with her 
aunt that evening. And, when they came home from 
the little ball, perhaps Inez was tired, perhaps her 
aunt was tired. Inez was conscious that she was cross; 
and she felt sure that Aunt Eunice was reserved and 
not communicative. 

The next morning she attacked her to find out 
what she had learned from the mysterious English¬ 
man ; the spy, as she persevered in calling him. 

“ Is he Blount, dear aunt? I have felt so sure that 
he was Blount under a false name. I suppose he has 
a new name for every country he goes into, and every 
time he changes his coat. I only wish I had called 


or. Show your Passports 263 

him ‘ Mr. Blount,’ to see the color come for once 
on those sallow cheeks. I mean to teach Mary to 
call him ‘Blount,” 

“Nonsense, child! you have not the least idea of 
what you are talking about. Mr. Blount is dead, in 
the first place: he died last spring. In the second 
place, and in the third place, he was not an Eng¬ 
lishman at all: he was a Tennessee senator.” She 
dropped her voice, even in their own room, and 
said, “ Captain Phil told me his father knew him.” 

Miss Inez was a little put down by this firstly, 
secondly, and thirdly. But she came to the charge 
again. “ Well, I was only a girl, and I did not under¬ 
stand politics. I thought that Blount was a sort of 
English spy, and I know this man is.” 

Eunice took the magisterial or duennaish manner; 
and the White Hawk looked from the one to the other, 
wondering why Inez was so much excited, and why 
Eunice seemed so grave. 

“ Dear Inez,” said her aunt, “ the Senate of the 
United States thought, or said they thought, that Mr. 
Blount was mixed up in a plot which King George’s 
people had for getting back the whole of our region 

— I mean of the American shore of the Mississippi 

— to the English. And they punished him for it. 
And he died. And that is the end of Mr. Blount.” 

“ What a provoking old aunt you are ! Of course 
I do not care whether his name is Blount, or what it 
is, so long as I am sure that it never was Lonsdale 
till he landed in Mexico. I am sure I used to hear 
no end of talk about Mr. Blount; and — and — I have 
it—it was Captain Chisholm, aunt. There!” And 



264 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

the girl jumped up, and performed an Apache war- 
dance with the White Hawk, in token that she had 
now rightly detected the name of her enemy. 

“You look as if you could scalp him, Inez. Take 
care, or White Hawk will.” 

“Scalp him! scalping is too good for him, dear 
aunt. I could scalp him beautifully. Let me show 
you.” And she flew at poor Aunt Eunice on the 
moment, seized from her luxuriant hair a pretty gold 
stiletto on which it was wound, gathered the rich curls 
up in her own left hand, and then, waving the stiletto 
above her head, with a perfect war-cry, affected to 
plunge it into the offending chevelure . The White 
Hawk laughed in a most un-Indian way; and poor 
Eunice fought valiantly to liberate herself. 

When peace was restored, by a ransom on both 
sides of a few kisses, Inez flung herself on the floor, 
and said, — 

“ Respectable lady, will you tell me now what was 
your conversation with Captain Chisholm, now dis¬ 
guised in this presidio under the fictitious name of 
Lonsdale, called an alias to procurators and counsel 
learned in the law; otherwise known as ‘The Man I 
Hate ’ ? ” And she waved the stiletto again wildly 
above her head. 

“My dear Pussy, Mr. Lonsdale is no more a soldier 
than you are; and I do not believe he ever heard of 
Captain Chisholm. When he goes to Orleans they 
will talk to him about those things, perhaps; but in 
England they were as much secrets as they are here.” 

“About what things, dear aunt?” said Inez, as 
serious now as she had been outrageous, 




or, Show your Passports 265 

“ About that foolish plan of the governor of Canada 
to pick up the stitches they dropped when they lost 
the Mississippi River. It was all a bold intrigue of 
the people in Canada, who probably had some in¬ 
structions from London, or perhaps only asked for 
some. But there were not ten men in England who 
ever heard of the plan. The governor of Canada 
sent this Captain Chisholm through to us, to see what 
could be done. And some foolish people fell into 
the plot: that is all.” 

“ And Mr. Lonsdale the spy, otherwise known as 
* The Man I Hate,’ ” — these words were accompanied 
as before by the brandishing of the stiletto, —“ has 
been sent again on just the same errand. Only this 
time he begins at Vera Cruz and Mexico. He travels 
north by Monterey and Monte-Clovez. He pretends 
to be interested in volcanoes and botany and in but¬ 
terflies. He makes weak little water-color pictures, 
almost as bad as mine, of the ruins of Tlascala 
and Cholula. All this is a mask, a vain and useless 
mask, to disguise him from my eyes and those of my 
countrymen. But see how vain is falsehood before 
truth! The moment he looks me in the face, the 
mean disguise falls off, and the spy appears. Another 
Andre, another Arnold, stands before me, in the pres' 
ence of 4 The Man I Hate.’ ” 

“ How did you find him out?” asked Eunice, 
laughing. 

“ First, Madame Malgares said that he was a 
hidalgo of the highest rank at King George’s court, 
that he was a duke of the blue blood, and that Lonsdale 
was only the name by which he travels incognito.” 





266 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

“ But it is not a week since you told me that Madame 
Malgares was a fool. I do not believe English princes 
of the blood travel incognito in the heart of Mexico.” 

“ Madame Malgares may be a fool,” said little Inez, 
wisely; “ but none the less may an acute and adroit 
man, who has even deceived Miss Eunice Perry, have 
dropped his guard when he spoke to her.” 

Inez was, however, a little annoyed by her aunt’s 
retort, and she tried her second reason. 

“ Second, his talk of butterflies and of flowers is 
not the talk of a virtuoso, nor even of an artist. It is 
assumed.” Here she waved the dagger again. “ He 
talks with interest when he drops his voice, when he 
inquires about President Adams, or Mr. Jefferson, 
about Captain Nolan, or — ” 

“ Heigh-ho ! ” and her animation was at an end; 
and, poor girl, she really looked sad and pale. 

“ About whom? ” said Eunice thoughtlessly. 

But Inez was not to be caught. 

“ I wish I knew who was president. What a shame 
it should take so long for news to come, when we 
came so quickly! Why, I dare say Roland knows, 
and papa; and we know nothing.” 

But Eunice Perry was not deceived by Inez’s change 
of subject. She was as much surprised as Inez was, 
that they had no message nor token from William 
Harrod; and she was quite as anxious about Philip 
Nolan, too, as her niece could be. 

Meanwhile, at the moment when the ladies were 
discussing Mr. Lonsdale so coolly, he was trying to 
take old Ransom’s measure. With or without an object 
of pressing his inquiries, he had walked out to the 


or. Show your Passports 267 

stables to have the personal assurance which every 
good traveller needs, that the horses which had 
brought him all the way from Mexico, and were to 
Carry him farther on his journey, were well cared for. 
At the stables he found, and was well pleased to find, 
old Ransom. 

“ Good-morning, Ransom,” he said, half shyly and 
half proudly. He spoke, unconsciously, with the 
“ air of condescension observable in foreigners,” and 
with an uncertainty which was not unnatural as to 
whether Ransom were or were not a servant. 

The truth was, that Ransom was entitled to all the 
privileges of a servant, and took all the privileges of 
a master. He noticed Mr. Lonsdale’s hesitation in¬ 
stantly, and from that moment was master of the 
situation. 

“ Mornin’, sir,” was his reply; and then he went on 
in a curious objurgation, in four or more languages, 
addressed to the half-breed who was currying Miss 
Inez’s horse. 

“ They do not treat horses quite as we do,” said 
Lonsdale, trying to be condescending. 

“ Donno what you do to ’em,” said Ransom civilly 
enough: “ there’s a good many ways to spile a horse. 
These here Greasers knows most of ’em.” 

“ Will you come into the stable, and look at my 
bay?” said Lonsdale artfully. “I do not like to 
trust him with these fellows.” 

The old man understood that this was a bribe, as 
distinctly as if Lonsdale had offered him half a crown. 
Rut no man is beyond the reach of flattery, — as the 
old saw says, we are at least pleased that we are 




268 Philip Nolan's Friends ; 

worth flattering, — and he accompanied the English¬ 
man into the other wing of the stable buildings. 
Having given there such advice as seemed good, he 
loitered, as Lonsdale did, in the open courtyard. 

“ Is there any news from above? ” said the English¬ 
man, pointing in the direction of the road up the 
river. 

Ransom had not had time to determine on his 
answer. He would have been glad to know what the 
ladies had told Lonsdale. As he did not know, he 
fell back on his policy of general distrust. 

“ Them redskins was back yesterday. All got so 
drunk could n’t tell nothin’. ” 

“ I wish I could hear from Captain Nolan,” said 
Lonsdale, — not as if he were asking a question. 

“ Need n’t be troubled about him,” said Ransom 
gloomily: “ he ’ll take care of himself.” 

“ I think he will,” said the Englishman, with an 
easy good-nature, which failed him as little in meet¬ 
ing Ransom’s brevities, as when he met little Inez’s 
impertinences, — “I think he will. But I would be 
glad to know there was no fighting.” 

Ransom said nothing. 

The other waited a moment, and, finding that he 
should draw nothing unless he gave something, 
risked something, and said, — 

“ Captain Nolan has no better friend than I am. I 
never saw him ; but I know he is an honorable gentle¬ 
man. And I do not want to see him and his country 
at a disadvantage when they meet these idolaters and 
barbarians.” 

The words were such as he would not, perhaps, 




or, Show your Passports 269 

have used in other circles. But they were not badly 
chosen. Certainly they were not, considering that 
his first object was to detach the old man from the 
policy of reserve. Ransom himself had often called 
the priests “ them idolaters ” in his talk with Miss 
Perry, with Inez, and even with the White Hawk, — 
in faithful recollection of discourses early listened to 
from Puritan pulpits. But not in Orleans, least of 
all in his master’s house, never even from his confrhes 
in Captain Nolan’s troop or with Harrod, had he heard 
the frank expression of a dislike as hearty as his own. 

His own grim smile stole over his face, not unob¬ 
served by the Englishman. 

I “ The truth is, Mr. Ransom,” said Lonsdale, follow¬ 
ing his advantage, “ there are a plenty of reasons why 
your country should make war with Spain, and why 
my country should help you if you will let us. But, 
when that war comes, let it be a war of armies and 
generals and fleets and admirals. Do not let an hon¬ 
orable gentleman like Mr. Nolan be flung away in 
a wilderness where nobody can help him.” 

He had said enough to change the whole current 
of Ransom’s thought and plan. Wisely or not, 
Ransom took into his favor a man who held such 
views as to the Spanish monarchy. He inwardly 
cemented a treaty of peace with Lonsdale, based on 
information which for years he had carried in the 
recesses of a heart which never betrayed confidence. 

The well-informed American reader should not 
need to be told, that not only through the West, but 
wherever there were active young men in the Ameri¬ 
can army at that time, the hope of “ conquering or 





270 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

rescuing” Mexico — as the phrase was—had found 
its way as among the probable or the desirable futures 
of the American soldier. When Taylor and Scott 
entered Mexico in triumph, in 1846, they were but 
making those visions of glory which had excited 
Alexander Hamilton and his friends nearly fifty years 
before. A curious thing it is, among the revenges 
and revelations of history, that Hamilton’s great rival, 
Burr, blasted his own fame and ruined his own life,, 
by taking up the very plan and the very hope which 
Hamilton had nursed with more reason, and, indeed, 
with more hope of success, a few years before. Silas 
Perry himself was not more interested in the plans of 
Miranda, the South American adventurer, than was 
Alexander Hamilton. And in Miranda’s early 
schemes, as is well known, he relied on the co-oper¬ 
ation, not of undisciplined freebooters from the 
American States, but of the American army under the 
direction of the American President. When, under 
President Adams, that army was greatly enlarged,— 
when Washington was placed at its head, with Hamil¬ 
ton for the first in command under him, — this army 
was not to act in ignoble seaboard defences. It was 
recruited to be stationed at the posts which have 
since become cities on the Ohio and the Mississippi; 
and, when the moment came, Hamilton was to lead it 
to Orleans, and, if God so ordered, to Mexico. “ Only 
twenty days’ march to San Antonio,” says one of 
those early letters, anticipating by a generation the 
days of Houston and David Crockett. 1 

1 Wilkinson’s letters to Hamilton, and Hamilton’s in reply on this 
subject, are still extant in MS. 


or. Show your Passports 271 

Of course all these plans were secrets of state. 
Not too much of them is now to be found in the 
archives of Washington, or in the published corre¬ 
spondence. The .War Department, was, very unfortu¬ 
nately,— or shall we say, very conveniently? — 
burned, with its contents, in 1800. But no such 
secrets could exist, no such plans could be formed, 
without correspondence — private, indeed, for more 
than success hung on the privacy — with the handful 
of loyal Americans who lived in Orleans. They were, 
to the last drop of their blood, interested to see such 
plans succeed. Their co-operation, so far as it could 
be rendered fairly, must be relied on when the 
moment for action came. Oliver Pollock, already 
spoken of in these pages, who had supplied powder 
to Fort Pitt in those early days of Washington’s 
battles, when powder was like gold-dust, had, before 
this time, left Orleans for Baltimore. There he was 
able to give to the Government such advice as it 
needed. When such an agent as Wilkinson, or Free¬ 
man, or Nolan, was despatched to Orleans, he con¬ 
fided what he dared to such reliable men as Silas 
Perry or Daniel Clark. 

In Silas Perry’s household there were many secrets 
of business or of state ; but none were secrets to Seth 
Ransom. True, there was a certain affectation main¬ 
tained as to what he knew and what he did not know. 
When the time came for a revelation, Silas Perry 
would make that revelation, for form’s sake. He 
would say, “ Ransom, I am going to send two boxes 
to Master Roland, by the ‘ Nancy,’ to Bordeaux.” 
But then he knew that Ransom knew this already; 






272 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

and Ransom knew that he knew that he knew it. 
There were occasions, indeed, when Silas Perry was 
humiliated in the family counsels, because he was 
obliged to ask for Ransom’s unoffered assistance in 
secret matters. There was a celebrated occasion, 
when Mr. Perry had lost the will of General Morgan 
which that officer had intrusted to him for safe and 
secret deposit. Silas Perry had put it away, without 
whispering a word of it to any one, not even to his 
sister, far less to Inez; and he had forgotten it 
through and through. And at last, years after, a 
messenger came in haste for it, General Morgan being 
ill, and wishing to change it. Mr. Perry came from 
the counting-house, and spent hours of a hot day in 
mad search for it. And finally, when he was almost 
sick from disgrace and despair, Eunice called Ransom 
to her. 

The old man entered, displeased and disgusted. 

“ Ransom, Mr. Perry has lost an important paper.” 

“ Know he has.” 

“ It is the will of General Morgan, and the general 
has sent for it” 

“ Know he has.” 

“ My brother, cannot find it.” 

“ Know he can’t.” 

Eunice even — whom he loved — was obliged to 
humiliate herself. 

“Do you remember his ever speaking to you of 
it?” 

“ Never said a word to me.” 

Eunice had to prostrate herself further. 

“ Do you think you could find it?” 



2 73 


or, Show your Passports 

“ Could, if he told me to.” 

‘‘Ransom, would you find it? he is very much 
troubled about it.” 

Ransom’s triumph was now complete; and he led 
his humbled master and mistress to the forgotten 
crypt where the will was laid away. 

To such a man, the general plan of Hamilton, 
Miranda, the English Cabinet, and the American 
Government was known as soon as it had been con¬ 
fidentially discussed between General Wilkinson and 
Silas Perry. It was as safe with him as with the 
English foreign secretary; far safer, as has proved 
since, than it was with Wilkinson. Ransom knew 
now, therefore, that within four years past the co¬ 
operation of an English fleet, an American army, and 
Spanish insurgents had been among things hoped for 
by the most intelligent men in his own country. And 
so the few words which Lonsdale spoke now led him 
instantly to the hasty conviction that Lonsdale was 
a confidential agent in a renewal of the same 
combination. 

I am afraid this discussion of politics has been but 
• rapidly read by the younger part of those friends' 
who are kind enough to hurry over these lines. Let 
me only say to them, that, if they will take the pains 
to read it, they will find the first step in the course 
which this country marched in for sixty years. That 
course eventually gave to it Texas, and afterward 
California. Among other things, meanwhile, it gave 
to it Oregon, and all east of Oregon. And when 
.Kansas and Nebraska came to be settled, came the 
question, “How?” And out of that question came 

iS 





274 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

the great civil war, which even the youngest of these 
young readers does not think unimportant. 

And, indeed, there needed powers not less than 
the statesmanship of Adams and Rufus King, the 
chivalry of Hamilton, and the fanaticism of Miranda, 
to bring about a marvel like that of peaceful talk 
between Seth Ransom and an Englishman. 

“ Do not let an honorable gentleman like Mr. 
Nolan be flung away in a wilderness where no one 
can help him.” These were Lonsdale’s words of 
frankness. 

“ Said so myself. Said so to him, and said so to 
Mr. Harrod. Told ’em both it was all dam nonsense. 
Ef the Greasers was after ’em, told ’em to get out 
of the way, and wait for the folks up above to 
settle ’em. Said so myself.” 

“Well!” said Lonsdale eagerly, “and what did 
they say? ” 

“ They said they was ready for ’em. They said 
they was nobody at Noches that dared follow where 
they was goin’: they wasn’t enough men there. 
An’ they was n’t when we was there. Mr. Harrod 
an’ I counted the horses, we did. They was n’t 
enough when we was there. But,” after a pause. 
“ they’s been more men sent ’em since. Hundred 
an’ sixty men went from this place over here, — went 
two months ago to Noches.” Another pause. Ran¬ 
som looked over his shoulder, made sure there were 
no listeners, and dropped his voice: “ Sent word of 
this to the cap’n. Got his message back yesterday. 
He left for home a week ago yesterday.” 

“ God be praised ! ” said Lonsdale so eagerly that 



or, Show your Passports 275 

even Inez would have had some trust in him. “ If 
only he runs the lookout at Nacogdoches!” 

“ He passed within ten miles on ’em while they 
was dancin’ and figurin’ with the ladies,” said the old 
man, well pleased. “ Guess he won’t run into their 
mouths this time.” 

“ If he gets safe home,” said the other, “ he will 
have chances enough to come over here, with an 
army behind him.” 

“ Mebbe,” was the sententious reply. But Ransom 
doubted already whether he had not gone too far in 
his relations to an officer of the English crown, as he 
chose to suppose Lonsdale to be; and his confidences 
for this day were over. 

Was he wise, indeed, in trusting “ The Man I 
Hate,” so far as he had done? 

We shall see — what we shall see. 


CHAPTER XXII 

BATTLE 

“ The cowards would have fled, but that they knew 
Themselves so many, and their foes so few.” 

Cymon a?id iphigenia. 

The question whether Spain and America should 
meet in battle in the forests of Texas was, at that 
moment, already decided, although Ransom and Lons- 
i dale did not know it. The descendants of Raleigh 
I and Sidney and Drake and Hawkins, of Amyas 
Leigh and Bertram and Robinson Crusoe and their 







276 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

countrymen, were to take up the gage of battle which 
had lain forgotten so long, and were to meet in fight 
the descendants of Alva and Cortez and Pizarro, and 
De Soto and Philip the Second. 

And for fifty years that battle was to go on; not 
on the seas, as in Drake’s days and Howard’s, but 
on the land, in sight of the very palaces Cortez 
had wondered at, and in the very deserts in which 
De Soto had wandered. 

And, when the glove was first picked up, poor 
Philip Nolan, alas! was the brave knight who stood 
for the faith and for the star of Sidney and Howard. 

Of the tragedy which followed, in the twenty-four 
hours since we saw him, history has left us two ac¬ 
counts, — one, the journal of Muzquiz, the officer 
whom we saw kissing his hand at Chihuahua; and 
the other, the tale of Ellis Bean, the youngest of 
Nolan’s companions. They differ in detail, as is of 
course; but, as to the general history of that cruel 
day, we know the story, and we know it only too 
well. 

The custom of Nolan’s camp was always that a third 
of the little party should keep the night-watch while 
two-thirds slept. It had happened, naturally enough, 
that the five Spaniards — as the Mexicans of the 
party were always called, when they were not called 
“ Greasers ” — made one of the three watches. And, 
as destiny ordered, these five were on duty on the 
night after Crooked Feather left with his message. 
“ As destiny ordered,” one says: had they not been 
there, Philip Nolan perhaps would never have been a 
martyr, and these words had never been written. 



or. Show your Passports 277 

Destiny, carelessness, or treachery, that night put 
these five men on guard; It was the 21st of March; 
and in that climate, to such men as these young 
fellows, there was little hardship in such beds as they 
had provided. They slept, and their leader slept, as 
hunters sleep after one day of work, and before an¬ 
other of enterprise. He had not confided to any 
of them but Blackburn the plan for an immediate 
return. 

Of a sudden the trampling of horses roused him. 
It was dark; still he judged it past midnight. The 
fear of a stampede, or of Indian thieves, was always 
present, and Nolan was on his feet. He hailed the 
guard. 

No answer ! 

He left the little shed in which they were sleeping. 
The guard were gone. 

“ Blackburn ! Bean ! Csesar ! The Greasers are 
gone ! Call all the men ! ” 

In the darkness the men gathered. 

From their wall of logs they peered out into the 
forest. It was not so dark but they could see here a 
figure passing and there. Nolan and the others 
hailed in Spanish, and in various Indian tongues ; but 
they got no answers. 

“Who will come to the corral with me?” cried 
their fearless leader. 

Half a dozen men volunteered. 

They crossed to the corral to find that the horses 
were safe. It was no stampeding party. Philip 
Nolan knew at that instant that he had not Indians to 
fight against, but the forces of the Most Catholic 




278 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

King of Spain; one hundred and sixty of them too, 
if Miss Eunice had been right in her counting. 

Of this he said nothing to his men. He bade each 
man charge his rifle; but no man was to fire till he 
gave the word. He looked for his own double- 
barreled fowling-piece. It was gone. One of the 
“ Greasers ” had stolen it, as he deserted . 1 

This act made their bad faith the more certain, and 
revealed to the men, what Nolan never doubted, the 
character of their enemies. He bade them keep well 
covered by the logs, and so they waited for the gray 
of the morning. 

Nor did they wait long. A party of the besiegers 
approached. Nolan showed himself fearlessly. 

“ Take care how you come nearer,” he cried. 
“ One or other of us will die if you do.” 

They halted like children, as they were bidden. 

“Who will come with me this time?” said he; 
and again the volunteers were all that he could ask. 

“ No, not with rifles! Lay down your rifles.” 
And he stepped forth unarmed from the little en¬ 
closure ; and they, without gun or pistol, followed. 

Again Nolan hailed the enemy in Spanish. 

“ Do not come near, for one or other of us will be 
killed if you do.” On this there was a consultation 
among the enemy; and, with a white flag, an Irish¬ 
man whose name was Barr came near enough to talk 
with Nolan in English. He said his commander was 
a lieutenant named Muzquiz, and he justified Eunice’s 
count of a hundred and sixty men. Unless Nolan 

1 The piece was afterward seen by Lieutenant Pike; and Muzquiz, 
the Spaniard, describes the theft, 


or, Show your Passports 279 

had more men than he seemed to have, fight was 
hopeless, Barr said. 

We shall see that,” said Nolan. “ What terms do 
they offer us?” 

Barr was not authorized to offer any terms. The 
orders of Muzquiz were to arrest them, and send 
them prisoners to Coahuila. 

“ Arrest us ! ” said Nolan, “ when you know I have 
your governor’s permit to collect these horses for 
your own army in Louisiana, and to bring in goods, 
if I choose, to pay the Indians for them; do you 
mean to arrest me?” 

Barr said he could say nothing of that. Muzquiz 
had come to arrest them, and he expected them to 
surrender “ in the name of the king.” 

Nolan turned to his men; but he needed not to 
consult them. They knew what Spanish courtesy to 
prisoners was too well. “ Let them fight if they 
choose,” was the sentiment of one and all. Barr 
went back to his master; and Nolan and his com¬ 
panions to the little log enclosure, which was yester¬ 
day only the poorest horse-pen, and was to-day a fort 
beleaguered and defended. 

Who knows what, even with such odds, the end 
might have been! These gallant Spanish troopers, 
ten to one, did not dare risk themselves too near. 
But, not ten minutes after the sharp-shooting began, 
Nolan exposed himself too fearlessly, was struck by 
a ball in the head, and fell dead, without a word. 

Muzquiz had brought with him a little swivel, on 
the back of a mule. He did not dare risk his men 
before the Kentucky and Mississippi sharp-shooters. 






280 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

But it was easy fighting, to load this little cannon 
with grape-shot, and fire it pell-mell upon the logs. 
If one of his men exposed himself, a warning rifle¬ 
shot showed that some one was alive within. But the 
Spaniards kept their distance bravely, and loaded and 
fired the swivel behind the shelter which the careful 
Muzquiz had prepared. 

•Within the pen there were various counsels. Ellis 
Bean, the youngest of the party, probably offered the 
best; which was, that at the moment the swivel was 
next discharged they should dash upon it and take it, 
trusting to the Spaniards’ unwillingness to die first. 

“ It is at most but death,” said Bean; “ and we may 
as well die so as in their mines.” And two or three 
of the boldest of them held with Bean. But the more 
cautious men said that this was madness. And so, 
after four hours of this aiming into the thicket from 
behind the logs, they loosened the logs on the side 
opposite the swivel, and then took the opportunity of 
the next discharge to escape from their fortress into 
the woods, bearing with them two wounded men, but 
leaving the body of their brave commander. 

There were but nine well men left, after the deser¬ 
tion, and these two wounded fellows. Each man 
filled his powder-horn ; and to old Caesar, who had no 
gun, was given the remaining stock of powder to 
carry. For a few minutes their retreat was not 
noticed. They got a little the start of the swivel- i 
firers. But the silence of the pen-walls told a story; 
and the Spaniards soon mustered courage to attack 
an empty fortress. Nothing there but Phil Nolan’s 
body, and the little stores of the encampment! 



or, Show your Passports 281 

Warily the host followed. Mounted men as they 
were, they of course soon overtook these footmen. 
But they kept a prudent distance still. No man 
wanted to be the first shot; and the whir of an occa¬ 
sional bullet would remind the more adventurous that 
it was better to be cautious. At last, however, they 
made a prize. Poor Caesar, with his heavy load, had 
lagged; and, as he had no gun, a brave trooper 
pounced upon him. All the powder of the pursued 
troop was thus in the hands of the pursuers. 

The next victory, announced by a cheer of Spanish 
rapture, was the surrender of one of the wounded 
men. He could not keep up with his friends, and he 
would not delay them. He was seen waving a white 
rag, and was surrounded by the advance with a shout 
of victory. 

So passed six hours of pursuit and retreat. Muz- 
quiz sent a body in advance, to command, with their 
carbines, both sides of the trail he knew his enemy 
would take. But so cautious was the Spanish fire, 
that the fortunate fellows passed through this defile 
without losing a man. Well for them that the Span¬ 
iards believed so religiously in the distance to which 
the Kentucky rifle would carry lead! Six hours of 
pursuit and retreat! At last Fero, who was more 
like a commander than any others in the little com¬ 
pany, and Blackburn the Quaker, called a halt. 
They counted their forces. All here, but he who 
had insisted on surrendering himself, — save, alas ! 
Caesar. 

Every man’s horn was nearly empty. Unless 
Caesar could be found — all was lost! 






282 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

No. He cannot be found! 

They are brave fellows; but there is nothing for 
it, but to hoist a white flag, which Muzquiz wel¬ 
comed gladly. 

He knew now what he could do, and what he could 
not do. He knew he could not make Spanish troop¬ 
ers with their carbines stand the sure fire of the Ken¬ 
tucky rifle. He knew Nolan was dead. The danger 
of the expedition was at an end. His own advance¬ 
ment was sure. In any event, it was victory. 

Muzquiz therefore sent in Barr the Irishman again, 
and this time bade him offer terms. The little party 
was to return to Natchitoches, and never come into 
Texas any more. In particular they were to prom¬ 
ise to make no establishment with the Indians. 

To this they replied that he might have saved 
himself trouble. This was just what he wanted 
to do. But they added that they should never 
give up their arms. 

They were assured that this was not demanded: 
only they must agree to be escorted back to Natchi¬ 
toches. 

To this they agreed, if they might go back and 
bury Nolan. Muzquiz consented to this. The party 
marched back together, and buried him. But no 
man knows his resting-place. Nolan’s River, a little 
branch of the Brassos, is the only monument of his 
fame. 

The whole party then turned eastward, and 
marched good-naturedly enough together to Nacog¬ 
doches. Once and again the Spaniards had to ac¬ 
cept of the superior skill of the Americans in 




or, Show your Passports 283 

building rafts, or constructing other methods for 
crossing the swollen streams. So they arrived at 
the little garrison. Which were the conquerors? 

It would have been hard to tell, until the morning 
after their arrival, when the Americans were dis¬ 
armed, man by man, and handcuffed as criminals. 

From that moment to this moment the words 
“Spanish honor” have meant in Texas “a snare 
and a lie.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 

AT SAN ANTONIO 

“ Of all their falsehood, more could I recount, 

But now the bright sun ’ginneth to dismount; 

And, for the dewy night now doth draw nigh, 

I hold it best for us home to hie.” 

Shepherd’s Calendar. 

April crept by at San Antonio; but it only crept 
The easy winter-life, which was not wintry, passed 
into the life of what ought to have been a lovely 
spring-time; for not at Nice or Genoa, better 
known, alas, to the average American reader than 
San Antonio, can spring be more lovely than it 
is there. But it was not lovely 7 . Major Barelo 
assured Eunice on his honor that he had no news 
from Muzquiz’s force above. He began to assure 
her that, if they had met the hunters, he certainly 
should have heard of it before this. Miss Perry 
tried to believe this, and she tried to make Inez 
believe it. But still the days hung heavy. The 






284 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

little entertainments of the garrison seemed heath 
less and dull. What was a game at prison-bounds, 
or a costume-ball, or a play of Cervantes, or a picnic 
at the springs, when people did not know whether 
dear friends were alive or dead, or in lifelong cap¬ 
tivity? How could one hunt for prairie-flowers, and 
analyze them and press them, when one remembered 
the ride across the prairies, and wondered where 
they were who shared it? 

Poor Inez had her own cause of anxiety, which 
burned all the more hotly in her poor little heart 
because she was too proud to speak of it, even 
to Aunt Eunice. Where was Will Harrod? If he 
had joined Captain Phil before Crooked Feather 
did, why had not Crooked Feather brought one 
word, or message, or token? If he had not joined 
Captain Phil? — that question was even worse. Oh, 
the whole thing was so hollow! That one should 
eat and drink and sleep, should go to balls and 
tertulias and reading-parties; that Lieutenant Gon¬ 
zales should lift one into the saddle, and talk bad 
English with one for the hours of a ride; that Mr. 
Lonsdale should hang round all the evening, and 
talk of everything but what he was thinking of, and 
she was thinking of, and Aunt Eunice was thinking 
of, •— it was all a horrid lie, and it was terrible. 

White Hawk was her only comfort. Dear child! 
she knew she was her only comfort; and, with ex¬ 
quisite instincts, she took upon her the duties of 
a comforter without once affecting that she took 
them. But she could make Inez forget herself, and 
she did. She would spin out the pretty lessons 


or. Show your Passports 285 

in writing, on which Inez had begun with her. 
She would lead her to talk about the spelling tasks 
and the reading lesson, which in Inez’s new-fledged 
dignity as a tutor she was giving. Then she would 
play teacher in her turn. They found porcupine’s 
quills ; and a lovely mess they made of things in dyeing 
them with such decoctions as White Hawk invented. 
They embroidered slippers for Eunice, for themselves, 
for Major Barelo, and for dear Aunt Dolores; even 
for old Ransom, they embroidered slippers as the 
winter and spring went by. Inez was becoming 
a proficient in other forms of wood-craft. Ah, me ! 
if Will Harrod had come back, she could have 
talked to him, before the spring went by, in pan¬ 
tomime quite as expressive as his own, and far 
more graceful. 

But then, just when they came back from a tramp 
on the beautiful river-side, with old Ransom and one 
and another attendant, laden down with their roots 
and barks and berries, and other stuff, — as the old 
man called it, — the first sight of the garrison 
brought back the old terrible anxiety. Inez would 
rush to Aunt Dolores or to Aunt Eunice, and say, 
“Is there any news?” as if this happy valley was 
no happy valley at all, and as if she could not 
forget how far parted she was from the world. 

Old Ransom took on himself to school her, in his 
fashion, more than her aunt thought wisest. 

“ Een,” he said to her one day as they rode, “ ye 
mus’ n’ take on so much as ye do for the cap’n. The 
cap’n’s all right, he is. He told me heself he should 
be back at the river ’fore March was ever. Them 



286 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

mustangs ain’t good for nothin’ ef you sells ’em after 
May, ’n’ the cap’n knew that’s well as I did. ’N’ he 
says, says he, ‘ Ransom,’ says he, ‘ I shall be in 
Natchez first week in April. I shall send two hun¬ 
dred on ’em down the river to Orleans in flats,’ says 
he; ‘’n’ I shall go across to the Cumberland River, 
through the Creek country, with the others.’ That’s 
what he says to me. He knows Bowles, the Injen 
chief—always did know lots of the redskins. ’N’ he 
says to me, ‘ I shall go to the Cumberland River to 
be there ’fore April’s over, time for the spring 
ploughing.’ Ye mus’ n’t take on so, Een.” 

Every word of this was a lie; but it was a lie in¬ 
vented with so kind an object, and, indeed, so well 
invented, that the recording angel undoubtedly 
dropped a tear of compassion and regret com¬ 
mingled, as he wrote it down. 

Poor Inez tried to believe it true. 

“ You never saw Crooked Feather again, Ransom, 
did you ? ” 

Ransom paused. He doubted for a moment 
whether he would not boldly create a second con¬ 
versation with Crooked Feather, in which that chief 
should describe an interview with William Harrod. 
But no! this was too much. For the old man loved 
the truth in itself, and did not ever intend to swerve 
from it. What he had said about Nolan and the 
horses, he believed to be the absolute truth of things. 
He had put it in the form of a conversation with 
Nolan, because he could thus most distinctly make 
Inez apprehend it, baby as she was in his estimation 
still. But, as to Harrod, he believed as implicitly 


or, Show your Passports 287 

that he had been scalped within the week after he 
left them. Believing that, he had no romance to 
invent which should restore him to the world. 

After a pause — not infrequent in his colloquies — 
he assumed a more didactic tone. It would, at 
another time, have delighted Inez; but now the 
weight at her heart was too heavy. Still she beck¬ 
oned the White Hawk to come up and ride by their 
side; and the old man went on with his lecture. 

“ I never see him, Een, and I never want to. Nig¬ 
gers is bad; French folks is bad; English is wus; 
and Spanish is wus then them, by a long sight; but 
redskins is the wust on ’em all. They’s lazy, that’s 
one thing; so is niggers. They’s fools, that’s one 
thing; so is the mounseers. They’s proud as the 
Devil, that’s one thing; so is the Englishmen. 
They ’ll lie’s fast ’s they can talk: so ’ll the Span¬ 
iards ; ’n’ they ’ll cheat and steal, and pretend they 
can’t understand nothin’ you say all the time. They’s 
a bad set. I gin your old chief (Crooked Feather he 
said his name was, but he lied; it wasn’t — didn’t 
have no name) — I gin him his sugar, ’n’ I turned 
him out of the warehouse, ’n’ I told him ef I ever see 
him ag’in, I’d thrash him within an inch of his life. 
He pertended he did n’t know nothin’, ’n’ that he 
! did n’t know what I meant. But he knew enough to 
make tracks, ’n’ I hain’t ever seen him sence, ’n’ I 
hain’t wanted to, neyther. Redskins is fools ’11’ liars 
’n’ thieves ’n’ lazy, ’n’ ain’t no good anyway.” 

Ma-ry understood enough of this eulogy on her 
old masters to laugh at it thoroughly; indeed she 
sympathized, and said to Inez,— 









288 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ Ma-ry knows, yes. Ransom knows, yes. Crooked 
Feather bad, lazy, steal. O Inez, Inez! darling dear, 
all bad, all lie, all steal ; ” and she flung down her 
reins in a wild way, and just rested herself fearlessly 
on the other’s shoulder, and kissed her once and 
again, as if to bless her that she had taken her from 
her old taskmasters; then she took the reins again, 
and made her pony fly like the wind along the road, 
and return to the party, as if she must do something 
vehement to express her sense of her escape from 
such captivity. 

Thus Ransom tried — and tried not unsuccessfully 
— to turn Inez’s thoughts for a moment from questions 
of Nolan and Harrod. 

But not for a long respite. The moment they 
passed the gate of the little wall, which in those days, 
after a fashion, bounded the garrison, it was evident 
that something had transpired. The lazy sentinel 
himself stood at his post with more of a military air. 
On the military plaza were groups of men together, 
in the wild gesticulation of Spanish talk, where 
usually at this hour no one would be seen. Certain 
that some news had come, Inez pushed her horse, and 
Ransom, in his respectful following, kept close behind 
her. She would not ask a question of the Spanish 
officers whom they dashed by; but she fancied that 
in their salute there was an air of gravity which she 
had certainly never seen before, — a gravity which the 
sight of two smiling, pretty girls, dashing by at a fast 
canter, certainly would not in itself have excited. 

Arrived in the courtyard, the excited girl swung 
herself into Ransom’s arms, gathered up her dress, 


or, Show your Passports 289 

and rushed into her aunt’s room. The White Hawk 
needed no help, but left her pony as quickly, and 
followed Inez. Eunice was not there at the moment; 
but, just as Inez had determined to go in search 
of her, her aunt appeared at the door. Oh, how 
wretchedly sad in every line of her face, and in the 
eyes which looked so resolutely on poor Inez! The 
news had come, and it was bad news! 

Eunice gave one hand to each, and led them both 
into the inner room. She shut the door. She made 
Inez lie down. Oh, how still she was! and how still 
they were! 

She sat by the girl’s side. She held her hand. 
She even stroked her forehead with the other, before 
she could speak. At last, — 

“ O my darling, my dearest! it is all too true ! It 
is all over.” 

Inez was on her elbow, looking straight into her 
eyes. 

“ Inez, my darling, they met; they found him only 
the day after he wrote to us. They fought him — 
the wretches — ten to his one. They killed him. 
They have taken all the others prisoners; and they 
are all to go to the mines, to slave there till the 
king shall send word to have them killed. O my 
darling, my child ! ” 

Inez looked her still in the face. 

“Who else is killed? Tell me all, dear aunt, tell 
me all! ” 

“ My darling, O my darling! I cannot hear that 
anybody but Nolan was killed. They killed him at 
their first fire, and he never spoke again, Dear, 

19 



290 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

dear fellow! oh, what will his little wife say or 
do?” 

It was the first time that in words Eunice had ever 
told Inez that Nolan had married the pretty Fanny 
Lintot, whose picture Inez had seen. In truth, he 
had married her just before he left Natchez. 

“ They say they took our people prisoners on 
terms of unconditional surrender. Inez, they say 
what is not true. Will Harrod, and all those men 
with Nolan, would have died before they would have 
been marched to the mines. But, my darling, I have 
told you all I know.” 

“There is no word from—from — from Captain 
Harrod?” asked Inez, finding it hard to speak his 
name even now. 

“ Oh! no word for us from anybody. There is 
only a bragging despatch with ‘God preserve Your 
Excellency many years,’ from this coward of a 
Muzquiz, — this man who takes an army to hunt a 
soldier. Why, I should have thought he had met 
Bonaparte hand to hand ! 

“ The Major sent for me. He is so kind ! And 
dear Dolores — oh, she is lovely. He told me all 
he knew. He promised to tell me all. Perhaps 
the prisoners will come this way: then we shall 
know. 

“ But what a wretch I am ! I have been praying 
and hoping so that I might break it to you gently; 
and I have only poured out my whole story without 
one thought. Dear, dear Inez, forgive me! ” 

She was beside herself with excitement. In truth, 
of the two, Inez seemed more calm. But she was, 


or, Show your Passports 291 

oh, so deadly pale! She tried to speak. No ! she 
could not say a word. She opened her lips, but no 
sound would come. Nay, even the tears would not 
come. She looked up — she looked around. She 
saw dear Ma-ry, her eyes flooded with tears, her 
whole eager face alive with her sorrow and her 
sympathy. Inez flung herself into her arms; and 
the tears flowed as she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed 
upon her shoulder. 

Eunice told Inez that Major Barelo had told her 
all. She thought he had. The loyal Spanish gen¬ 
tleman had kept his secret well. 

He had not told her all. The bragging despatch 
from Muzquiz had been accompanied with a little 
parcel. This parcel contained the ears of Philip 
Nolan ! The chivalrous Muzquiz, the representative 
of the Most Catholic King, had cut off the ears of 
the dead hero, to send them in token of victory to 
the governor! 

So low had sunk the chivalry which in the days of 
Lobeira gave law to the courtesy of the world ! 

Of this accompaniment to the despatch, Barelo had 
said nothing to Eunice Perry; nor did she know it 
till she died. 

We know it from the despatch in which the Cas* 
tilian chief announces it. 


292 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER XXIV 

“I MUST GO HOME ” 

“ Now with a general peace the world was blest; 

While ours, a world divided from the rest, 

A dreadful quiet felt, and, worser far 
Than arms, a sullen interval of war: 

Thus when black clouds draw down the laboring skies, 

Ere yet abroad the winged thunder flies, 

A horrid stillness first invades the ear, 

And in that silence we the tempest fear.” 

Astrcea Redux. 

Poor Inez ! Poor Eunice ! 

They kept their grief to themselves as best they 
could. But every one in the garrison circle knew 
there was a grief to keep, though no one, not even 
Doha Maria, suspected the whole of it, and no one 
could quite account for the depth of the ladies’ 
interest in the freebooters. Eunice said boldly that 
it would prove to be all a mistake, which De Nava 
and Salcedo would surely regret. That Mr. Nolan 
was an accomplished gentleman, they all knew, for 
he had visited Antonio again and again: he had 
danced in their parties, and dined at their tables. 
She said he was Gayoso’s friend, and Casa Calvo’s 
friend, and that they were not the men she took them 
for, if they did not resent such interference from 
another province. She said boldly, that there would 
have to be some public statement now, whether the 
King of Spain meant to protect his subjects in 
Louisiana against other subjects in Mexico. So far 


or, Show your Passports 293 

Eunice carried talk with a high spirit, because she 
would gladly give the impression, in the garrison 
circle, that she and Inez were wounded with a sense 
of what may be called provincial pride. The inhos¬ 
pitality exercised toward Nolan to-day might be 
exercised toward them to-morrow. 

But, while Eunice Perry took this high tone in the 
long morning talks of the ladies, her own heart was 
sick with the secret her brother had confided to her. 
She knew that Orleans and Louisiana were Spanish 
only in name. Did not De Nava and Salcedo know 
this also? Was not this bold dash against Nolan the 
first declaration of the indifference of Spanish com¬ 
manders to all directions from Louisiana, now Loui¬ 
siana was French again? And, if it were so, ought 
not Eunice Perry to be looking toward getting her 
white doves to their own shelter again as soon as 
might be? 

She determined, not unwisely, to confide to Ran¬ 
som the great secret of state which her brother had 
intrusted to her. In doing this, she knew she would 
not displease Silas Perry, who would have told Ran¬ 
som within a minute after he had heard it, for the 
mere convenience of not having to perplex himself 
by hiding from his right hand what affected both 
hands every moment. 

Eunice was not displeased that for once she could 
take the old man by surprise. She chose, as she 
was wont to do for private conferences, a chance 
when they were riding; for, while the old stone walls 
of the garrison might have ears, the river, the prairie, 
and the mesquits had none. 


294 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ Ransom, you know why all the people in Orleans 
speak French?” 

“They’s French folks, all on ’em, mum, they is. 
Them Spaniards is nothin’. Ain’t real Spanish, none 
on ’em. Gayoso, he’d lived in England all his life. 
This one has to talk French. Sham-Spanish all on 
’em, they is.” 

“ Yes, Ransom, the King of Spain sends over 
officers who speak French, because the people are 
French people.” 

“Yes, ’m, all French folks once; had French guv- 
’nors. Awful times, wen your brother fust come 
there, — when they tried to send the Spanish guv- 
’nor packing, — good enough for him, too. He 
caught ’em and hanged ’em all — darned old rascal, 
he did. Awful times! He was a Paddy, he was; 
darned old rascal! ” 

“Yes, Ransom, and a very cruel thing it was. 
Well, now, Ransom, the King of Spain is frightened; 
and he has given Orleans back, and all the country, 
to the French.” 

“ Guess not, Miss Eunice! ” said the old man 
quickly, really surprised this time. 

“Yes, Ransom, there is no doubt of it; but it is a 
great secret. The French general told my brother, 
and he bade me tell no one but you and Inez. Do 
not let these people dream of it here.” 

“ No, marm, and they don’t know it now. Ef they 
knew it, I should know. They don’t know nothin’.” 
Ransom said all this slowly, with long pauses between 
the sentences. But Eunice could see that he was 
pleased,—yes, well pleased with the announcement. 


or, Show your Passports 295 

His eyes looked, like a prophet’s, far into the distance 
before him; and his face slowly beamed with a well- 
satisfied smile, as if he had himself conducted the 
great negotiation. 

“ Good thing, Miss Perry! guess it’s a good thing. 
Mr. Perry did not go for nothin’. Them French don’t 
know nothin’. King of Spain, darned fool, he don’t 
know nothin’. Ye brother had to go ’n’ tell ’em.” 

“ No, Ransom, I do not think my brother told 
them. But he says he is glad to belong to the side 
that always wins.” 

“ Guess Mr. Perry told ’em, ma’am,” was Ran¬ 
som’s fixed reply. “They’s all fools — don’t know 
nothin’.” 

Eunice had made her protest, and did not renew 
it. She knew she should never persuade the old 
man that he and Silas Perry together did not manage 
all those affairs in the universe which were managed 
well. 

“ My brother is well pleased, Ransom, and so is 
Roland. Roland is quite a friend of General Bona¬ 
parte.” 

“ Yes, ’m, this man always wins. Say his soldiers 
cum over here to learn fightin’. Say General Wash¬ 
ington had to show ’em how. Say Roshimbow’s 
cornin’ over to the islands now. I knew that one, 
Roshimbow, myself; held his hoss for him one day, 
down to Pomfert meetin’-house, when he stopped to 
get suthin to drink at the tavern. General Washing¬ 
ton was showin’ him about fightin’ then, and so was 
old General Knox, and Colonel Greaton; and now 
he’s been tellin’ this other one. That’s the way they 


296 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

knows how to do it. French is nothin’; don’t know 
nothin’. This other one, he’s an Eyetalian.” 

“ This other one,” who thus received the art of war 
at second-hand from Colonel Greaton of the Massachu¬ 
setts line, and from George Washington, was the per¬ 
son better known in history as Napoleon Bonaparte. 

“ Ransom, if there is one whisper of war between 
France and Spain, we must get back to Orleans. I 
am sure I do not know how. Or if there is war be¬ 
tween England and France again, or between England 
and Spain. Indeed, I wonder sometimes that we 
ever came; but we acted for the best.” 

She hardly knew that he was by her, as she fell back 
on these anxieties. But it was just as well. The old 
man was as sympathetic as her mother would have 
been. 

“ Don’t you be troubled, mum. It’s peace now, 
and the major here thinks it’s like to be. So does 
the guv’nor and the general. Heerd ’em say so yes¬ 
terday. It’s peace now, and it’s like to be.” Here 
a long pause. “ Ain’t no cause to be troubled. Miss 
Inez liked the ride cornin’, and she ’ll like it goin’. 
There’s two or three of the Greasers here will go 
where I tell ’em, and three of the niggers too, ef you 
don’t like to ask him for soldiers. Should n’t take no 
trouble about it. When you want to go, mum, 
we’ll go. I’ll tell ’em the king sent word we was to 
go.” And his own smile showed that he was not 
displeased at the prospect of leaving behind him a 
community which he held in deeper scorn than the 
Orleans which he loved while he despised. 

“ I hope we may not have to go, Ransom; but you 


or, Show your Passports 297 

must keep your eyes open and your ears, and we will 
be ready to go at an hour’s warning.” 

“ Yes, ’m, the sooner the better.” 

The truth was, that the signal came sooner than 
Eunice expected, and in a way as bad as the worst 
that she had feared. Late in the afternoon of a sultry 
day in June, —a day which had been pronounced too 
hot for riding, — the ladies had just returned from a 
bath in the river, and were not in full costume, when 
a clamor and excitement swept among the garrison, 
and, in spite of Major Barelo’s precautions and the 
Doha Maria’s, made way even into the rooms of 
the American ladies. The White Hawk ran out to 
reconnoitre and inquire. 

A band of Spanish troopers, with great fanfarons 
of trumpets, and even with little Moorish drums, came 
riding into the plaza, and in the midst, with a troop 
behind as well as before, a little company of eleven 
bearded men, dirty and ragged, heavily ironed lest 
they might leap from their horses, and, without arms, 
overthrow a hundred Spanish cavalry. These were 
the American prisoners. They had been kept a 
month at Nacogdoches, listening to lies about their 
release, and at last were on their way to Chihuahua 
and the mines. 

The White Hawk, with her usual indifference to 
regulations, walked right down to this wretched coffle, 
and in a minute recognized Blackburn, who had seen 
her at Nacogdoches. Without attempting a word of 
English, she asked him in pantomime where Harrod 
was, for the girl saw that he was not in the number. 
Blackburn did not conceal his surprise. He had 


298 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

taken it for granted, as they all had, that Harrod and 
the others had been held by the Spaniards. He told 
the girl, in gestures which she perfectly understood, 
that they had never seen Harrod, nor King, nor 
Adams, nor Richards, since, with old Caesar, he 
parted from them in the autumn. 

Then she ventured on the further question, to 
which, alas! she knew the answer, — Where was 
Captain Nolan? Ah, me ! the poor fellow could only 
confirm the cruel news of two months before. His 
quick gesture showed where the fatal shot struck, 
and how sudden was his death. Then he told, in a 
minute more, that all this was but the morning after 
Crooked Feather left them. He called her to him, 
and bade her stroke his horse’s neck, and lie close 
against his fore-leg as she did so. She was as quick 
and stealthy as a savage would have been in obeying 
him; and in an instant more she was rewarded. He 
slid into her hand, under the rough mane, the little 
prayer-book which Eunice had sent to Nolan. Black¬ 
burn himself had taken it from his leader’s body when 
they buried him ; and though, Heaven knows, he had 
been stripped and plundered once and again since, 
so that nothing else was left him that he could call 
his own, the plunderers were men who had a certain 
fear of prayer-books, — if it were fear which rever¬ 
enced, — and, for good reasons and for bad, they had 
left him this and this alone. 

“ Come again ! Come again ! ” said the White 
Hawk fearlessly; and she hurried away from the 
troop, with the news she had collected. In a minute 
more she had joined the ladies. 


or, Show your Passports 299 

“ Troopers come — Ma-ry — Ma-ry — troopers. 
Nolan’s men come, — five, five, one ! ” and she held 
up her fingers. “ Poor men ! they are all — what 
you call — iron — iron — here, here — on hands — on 
feet. Blackburn come : me talk to Blackburn, Black¬ 
burn tell all. Darling, darling, Will Harrod never 
found them 1 Will Harrod never saw them! O 
darling, darling dear! Will Harrod all safe, — all 
gone home, — Orleans, — darling, darling dear! ” 

“Who says he’s safe? ” cried poor Inez, starting 
to her feet. 

“Me say so, — me say he never saw Nolan,— 
never saw Blackburn. Blackburn said he was here. 
Blackburn wonder very, very much, Will Harrod not 
here. Blackburn tell me, — tell me now, — Will 
Harrod never come, King never come, Adams never 
come, Richards never come. Blackburn say all here. 
Nobody come but old Caesar and Blackburn. Old 
Caesar here now: me see old Caesar.” 

Inez had fallen back when she saw that Harrod’s 
safety was only the White Hawk’s guess. But now 
she started. 

“ Dear, dear old Caesar! let me go see him too; ” 
and they ran. But the prisoners had already been 
led away; and there needed formal applications to 
Barelo — and who should say to whom else ? — before 
they could talk with the poor old fellow. 

To such applications, however, Barelo was in no 
sort deaf. If he had dared, and if there had not been 
twenty or thirty days’ hard travel to the frontier, he 
would have given permits enough to Ransom and Miss 
Perry and Mademoiselle Inez and the White Hawk to 




300 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

have set every one of the “bearded men” free; he 
would have made a golden bridge for them to escape 
by, for Major Barelo could and did read the future. 
This was impossible. But old Ransom daily, and one 
or other of the ladies, saw the prisoners, and, while 
they could, ministered to their wants. 

White Hawk’s first story was entirely confirmed. 
Neither of the escort of the ladies had ever been seen 
on the Tockowakono or Upper Brassos. The men 
thought they had deserted, and gone back to Natchez; 
but Inez of course, and Eunice, knew that Harrod 
had never deserted his friend. 

“No ! the Apaches have him, or the Comanches.” 

“They had him! they had him, Eunice! But 
they keep no prisoners alive ! ” and, in a paroxysm 
of weeping, Inez fell on her aunt’s lap; and the pre¬ 
tended secret of her heart was a secret no longer to 
either of them. 

It was Inez’s wretchedness, perhaps, which wore 
more and more on Eunice as the summer crept by. 
Perhaps it was the wretchedness of the miserable 
handful of men kept in close confinement at Antonio. 
Month after month this captivity continued. More 
and more doubtful were Cordero’s and Herrara’s 
words, when Eunice forced them, as she would force 
them, to speak of the chances of liberation. As 
September passed there came one of the flying 
rumors from below, of which no man knew the 
authority, that the King of Spain had quarrelled with 
the French Republic. This rumor gave Eunice new 
ground for anxiety as to her position; and she was 
well disposed to yield, when Inez one night broke all 


or, Show your Passports 301 

reserve, and, after one of the endless talks about the 
mysteries and miseries around them, cried out in her 
agony, — 

“ I must go home ! ” 


CHAPTER XXV 

COUNTERMARCH 

“ Berenice . ’T is done! 

Deep in your heart you wish me to be gone ; 

And I depart. Yes, I depart to-day. 

— ‘ Linger a little longer ? ’ Wherefore stay ? 

To be the laughing-stock of high and low ? 

To hear a people gossip for my woe ? 

While tidings such as these my peace destroy, 

To see my sorrows feed the common joy ? 

Why should I stay? To-night shall see me gone.” 

Racine. 

Eunice slept upon the girl’s ejaculation; and the next 
morning she was determined. She went at once to 
her brother’s brother-in-law, and said to him that 
their visit had lasted nearly a year, that the very 
circumstance impended by which her brother had 
limited it, and that frankly she must ask him for such 
escort as he could give her to Natchitoches. Once 
at Natchitoches, she would trust herself to her own 
servants’ care, as they should float down the Red 
River. 

The major was careworn, evidently disliked to 
approach the subject; but, with the courtesy of a 
host and of a true gentleman, tried to dissuade her. 
He asked her why a breeze between Bonaparte and 




302 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

his sovereign should affect two ladies in the heart of 
America. Was this affectation? Had he heard that 
Louisiana was to be French again? Did he want to 
come at her secrets? 

Eunice looked him bravely in the eye before she 
answered. She satisfied herself that he was sincere; 
that he did not know that great state secret which 
had been intrusted to her, and which would so easily 
explain her anxiety. 

“ I do not know when my brother will sail on his 
return. Suppose the First Consul of France chooses 
to say that he shall not return? ” 

“ Then your niece will be here under the protection 
of her nearest American relations.” 

“ Suppose General Victor, with this fine French 
army of which you tell me, passes by St. Domingo, 
and lights upon Orleans. How long will my friend 
Casa Calvo defend that city, with a French people 
behind him, and a French army and fleet before 
him ? ” 

“ He will defend it quite as long without the aid of 
the Mademoiselles Perry as with,” was Barelo’s grave 
reply, made as if this contingency were not new to 
his imaginings. 

“ And if my brother and my nephew be with 
General Victor, if they land in Orleans, surely they 
will expect bo find us there,” said poor Eunice quite 
too eagerly. 

“ My dear sister,” said the Spanish gentleman 
gravely, “ do not let us argue a matter of which we 
know so little. I am only anxious to do what you 
wish: only I must justify myself to Don Silas Perry, 


or. Show your Passports 303 

in event of any misfortune. I cannot think that he 
would approve of my sending you two ladies into a 
scene of war.” 

“ Then you believe that war impends! ” cried 
Eunice, more anxious than ever. “ My dear, dear 
brother, what madness it was that we ever came! ” 

This was not a satisfactory beginning. It was the 
determination, however, as it happened, of the route 
which the little party took, and took soon, — by one 
of those chances wholly unhoped for when Eunice 
approached the major. On the very afternoon of 
that day, the monotony of the garrison life, which had 
become so hateful to both the ladies, was broken up 
by the arrival of an unexpected party. Mr. Lonsdale 
had returned, with a rather cumbrous group of 
hunters, guides, grooms, and attendants without a 
name, with whom he had made a long excursion to 
the mines of Potosi. The arrival of so large a party 
was a great event in the garrison. 

Greatly to the surprise of Miss Perry and her niece, 
who had excused themselves from a little reunion 
which called together most of the garrison ladies, a 
visitor was announced, and Mr. Lonsdale presented 
himself. Inez was fairly caught, and, at the moment, 
could not escape from the room, as she would have 
done gladly. She satisfied herself by receiving him 
very formally, and then by sitting behind him and 
making menacing gestures, which could not be seen 
by him, but could be seen perfectly by her aunt and 
Ma-ry. With such assistance Eunice Perry carried 
on the conversation alone. 

With some assistance, he was fired up to tell the 



304 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

story of what he and his party had done, and what 
they had not done; to tell how silver was mined, and 
what was a “ conducted' He told of skirmishes with 
Indians, in which evidently he had borne himself with 
all the courage of his nation, and of which he spoke 
with all the modesty of a gentleman. But, as soon 
as Eunice paused at all, Mr. Lonsdale, as his wont 
was, shifted the subject, and compelled her to talk of 
herself and her own plans. Not one allusion to poor 
Nolan: that was too sad. But, of American politics, 
many questions; of the politics of the world, more. 
Who was this man, and why was he here? 

“ When I was in Philadelphia and New York they 
called Mr. Jefferson the pacific candidate. Will he 
prove to be the pacific president? ” 

“ You more than I know, Mr. Lonsdale. It was Pre¬ 
sident Adams who made peace with the First Consul.” 

“ I know that, and I know the Mademoiselles Perry 
are good Federalists.” Here he attempted to turn 
to see Inez, and almost detected her doubling her 
fist behind his back. “ I had a long talk with 
Mr. Jefferson, but I could not get at his views or 
convictions.” 

“ He would hardly mention them to a — to any but 
an intimate friend,” said Eunice rather stiffly, while 
Inez represented herself as scalping the Englishman. 

“No, no! of course not! Yet I wish I knew. I 
wish any man knew if the First Consul means 
war or peace with England, or war or peace with 
America.” 

Eunice saw no harm here in saying what she knew. 

“ General Bonaparte means peace with America, 




or, Show your Passports 305 

my brother says and believes. My nephew has been 
intimate at Malmaison, and my brother has seen the 
First Consul with great advantages. He thinks him 
a man of the rarest genius for war or for peace. He 
is sure that his policy is peace with us, — with 
America, I mean.” 

“You amaze me,” said Mr. Lonsdale. “I sup- 
posed this general was one more popinjay like the 
others, — a brag and a bluster. I supposed his his¬ 
tory was to be strung on the same string with that 
of all these men.” 

And in saying this Lonsdale did but say what 
almost eVery Englishman of his time said and be¬ 
lieved. Nothing is more droll, now it is all over, 
than a study of the English caricatures of that day, as 
they contrast “ the best of kings ” and “ the Corsican 
adventurer.” How pitiless history chooses to be! 

In one of these caricatures George III. figures as 
Gulliver, and “ General Buonaparte ” is the King of 
Liliput! 

Eunice could well afford to be frank at this time, 
whether Lonsdale were Conolly, Chisholm, Bowles, or 
any other English spy. 

“ My last letters from my brother are very late. 
He was certain then of peace between England and 
France; and of this I have spoken freely here.” 

Lonsdale certainly was thrown oft' guard. His 
whole face lighted up with pleasure. 

“Are you sure? are you sure? Let me shake 
hands with you, Miss Perry. This is indeed almost 
too good to be true! ” 

Eunice gave him her hand, and said, — 

20 




306 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

“ Let us hope the new century is to be the century 
of peace, indeed. Shall we drink that toast in a glass 
of rain-water? ” and, at a sign from her, the White 
Hawk brought him a glass of pure water from a 
Moorish-looking jar of unglazed clay. 

“ Ma-ry, my dear child,” said the Englishman 
slowly, with the tears fairly standing in his eyes, “ do 
you know what comes to those who give others a cup 
of cold water?” 

Eunice had never seen such depth of feeling on his 
face or in his manner; and even Inez was hushed to 
something serious. 

As he put down the glass, he passed Miss Perry, 
and in a low tone he said, — 

“ May I speak with you alone? ” 

Eunice, without hesitation, sent the girls to bed. 
Who was this man, and what did he come for? 

“ Pardon me, Miss Perry, you know of course how 
much you can trust of what is secret, in this cursed 
web of secrets, to our young friends. You may call 
them back, if you please. You may tell them every 
word I tell you. But I supposed it more prudent to 
speak to you alone. As I came across the Rio 
Grande I learned, and am sure, that Governor Salcedo 
has gone to Orleans. That means something.” 

Of course it did. The transfer of Salcedo to the 
government of Louisiana must mean more stringent 
and suspicious government of Orleans. Did it mean 
war with America? Did it mean war with France? 

“ I thought,” continued the taciturn Englishman, 
stumbling again now, — “ I thought—I was sure — 
you should know this; and I doubted if our friends 



or, Show your Passports 307 

here would tell you. In your place, such news would 
take me home; and therefore I hurried here to tell 
you. We made short work from the river, I assure 
you.” 

“ How good you are ! ” said Eunice frankly, and 
smiling even in her wonder why this impassive 
Englishman, this spy of Lord Dorchester or of Lord 
Hawksbury, should care for her journey. 

“ How good you are ! You are very right. Yet to 
think that I should want to go nearer to that brute 
Salcedo! For really I believe it is he, Mr. Lonsdale, 
it is he who murdered our friend. But I do — I do 
want to go home. Oh! why did I come? I asked 
my brother that this morning.” 

“The past is the past, dear Miss Perry. Your 
question is not, Why did you come? but, How shall 
you go?” 

“ And how indeed? ” said she sadly. “ My brother 
virtually refuses me an escort. I do not know why. 
He wants to keep us here.” 

“ Major Barelo hates, dreads, despises, this Salcedo, 
— this cruel, vindictive, ‘moribund old man,’ as I 
overheard him say one day, — as heartily as you 
do, or as I do. But, all the same, he is a soldier. 
De Nava or Salcedo may have ordered every man 
to be kept at this post, or within this intendancy.” 

“ They have ordered something,” said Eunice; 
and she mused. Then frankly, “ Oh, Mr. Lonsdale ! 
you are a diplomatist: I am a woman. You know 
how to manage men: for me, I do not know how to 
manage these two girls. They manage me,” and she 
smiled faintly. “ Forget you are an official, and for 


308 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

twenty-four hours think and see what an English 
gentleman can do for a friend.” 

She even rose from her chair in her excitement: 
she looked him straight in the face, as he remembered 
her doing once before; and she gave him her hand 
loyally. 

Lonsdale was clearly surprised. 

“ Why you call me a diplomatist, I do not know. 
That I am a gentleman, this you shall see. Miss 
Perry, I came into this room, only to offer what you 
ask. Because the offer must be secret if you decline 
it, I asked you to send the young ladies away.” 

Then he told her that he had reason to believe,—- 
he said no more than that, — he had “ reason to 
believe ” that a little tender to an English frigate 
would be hanging off and on at Corpus Christi Bay, 
on the coast below San Antonio. He knew the com¬ 
mander of this little vessel, and he knew he would 
comply with his wishes in an exigency. Wherever 
the “Firefly” might be, her boats could push well up 
the river. 

“ Your brother will give you escort in this com¬ 
mand, without the slightest hesitation; and, once on 
a king’s vessel, you need no more,” he said eagerly. 

Eunice was surprised indeed. 

“ Could we wait for her, down yonder on the 
shore? What would these girls do in such a 
wilderness?” 

“There will be no waiting,” he said quietly but 
firmly. “ The moment I suspected your danger, — 
I beg your pardon, your anxiety, — I sent two of 
my best men down the coast to signal Drapier. 



or, Show your Passports 309 

His boats will be at La Bahia if you determine 
to go. They will be there, on the chance of your 
determining.” 

“Mr. Lonsdale! how can I thank you? I do 
thank you, and you know I do. Let me call Ran¬ 
som. Major Barelo shall give us the escort; nay, 
we really need no escort to Bahia. The girls shall 
be ready, and we will start an hour before sunset 
to-morrow.” 

She called the old man at once. She gave her 
orders in the tone which he knew meant there was to 
be no discussion. She said no word of a secret to be 
preserved: she had determined at once to trust the 
English spy’s good faith. She and her doves would 
be out of this Franciscan and Moorish cage before the 
setting of another sun. Better trust an English spy 
than the tender mercies of Nemisio de Salcedo, or the 
ingenious wiles of Father Jeronimo and his brothers ! 

Major Barelo was surprised, of course, but clearly 
enough he also was relieved. Lonsdale was right 
when he guessed that Elguezebal and he could easily 
give escort between the fort and the bay, while they 
might not send any troops as far away as the Red 
River. “ With my consent not a bird should leave 
Texas for Louisiana;” this was always Salcedo’s 
motto. The wonder was that he himself crossed that 
sacred barrier. 

And by five o’clock of the next day the dresses 
were packed, and the good-byes were said. Old 
Ransom had drawn the last strap two holes farther 
up than earlier packers had left it. He had scolded 
the last stable-boy, and then made him rich for life 


310 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

by scattering among all the boys a handful of rials, 
— “ bits,” as he called them. He had lifted the girls 
to their saddles, while Miss Eunice more sedately 
mounted from the parapet of the stairs; and then 
the two troops, one English in every saddle and 
stirrup, the other French as welL in its least detail, 
filed out into the plaza. Both were extraordinary 
to a people of horsemen, whose Spanish equip¬ 
ments were the best in the world. Major Barelo and 
dear Aunt Dolores stood on the gallery; and he 
flung out his handkerchief, and said, “ Good-by.” 

“Just as dear papa said on the levee! Oh, dear¬ 
est aunty, if he could only be there to meet us! 
Why, aunty, it was a year ago this living day! ” 

Sure enough, it was just a year since the little 
Inez’s journeyings had begun. She was a thousand 
years older. 

An hour’s ride out of town, and then the sun was 
down; but here were the tents pitched and waiting 
for them. So like last year! but so unlike! No 
old Caesar, alas! Inez’s last care had been to visit 
him in the lock-up, and to promise him all papa’s 
influence for his release. No Phil Nolan, alas ! and 
no Will Harrod! Eunice confessed to Lonsdale 
that, if she had had imagination enough to foresee the 
wretched recollections of the camp, she could not 
have braved them. But Inez, dear child, was truly 
brave. She said no word. She was pale and 
thoughtful; but she applied herself to the little cares 
of the encampment, which a year ago she would have 
lazily left to her cavaliers, and she made the White 
Hawk join her. 


or, Show your Passports 3 11 

Lonsdale also was eager and careful. But oh, the 
difference between the elaborated services of this man, 
trained in cities, and the easy attentions of those 
others, born to the wilderness, and all at home 
in it! 

Ransom, with all his feminine sympathy, felt the 
lack of what they had last year, and managed, in his 
way, to supply it better than any one else could. 
His vassals had served the supper better than could 
have been hoped ; the beds were ready for the ladies, 
and as soon as the short and quiet meal was over 
they retired. 

Lonsdale lighted a cigar, called the old man to 
him, and invited him to join him. No, he would not 
smoke, never did; but when Lonsdale repeated his 
invitation he sat down. 

“ You are quite right, Mr. Ransom. The ladies 
like this camp-life better than any quarters they 
would have given us yonder.” 

He pointed over his shoulder at some little build¬ 
ings of an outpost of the “ Mission.” 

Ransom did not conceal his disgust as he looked 
round. 

“See the critters furder,” said he: “treat us jest 
as they treated them redskins last spring when they 
got um. They would ef they wanted to. See um 
furder. Et’s them cussed black goats ’n’ rope-yarn 
men that’s at the bottom o’ this war ag’in the cap’n 
— Cap’n Nolan. The cap’n couldn’t stand um, he 
couldn’t; he told um so, he did. He gin um a bit 
of his mind. Cussed critters never forgot it, they 
(lid n’t — never forgot it. Cap’n gin um a bit of his 



31 2 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

mind, he did. Cussed critters is at the bottom of 
this war. See um furder.” 

“But you have to see them a good deal at Orleans, 
Mr. Ransom, do you not? There is no Protestant 
church there, is there? ” 

“ Guess not. Ain’t no meetin’-house there, and 
no meetin’. Ain’t nothing but eyedolaters, ’n’ 
immigis, ’n’ smoke-pans, ’n’ boys in shirts. See um ! 
guess we do, the critters. Bishop comes round to 
dine. Likes good Madeira and Cognac ’zwell ’zany- 
body, he does. Poor set, all on um. Ignorant 
critters. Don’t know nothin’. No ! ain’t no meetin’- 
house in Orleans.” 

“Do they give Mr. Perry or Miss Perry any trouble 
about their religion? Do they wish them to come to 
church, or to the confessional? Did they baptise 
Miss Inez? ” 

“Do they? I see um git Mr. Perry to church ef 
he did n’t want to go ! ” and the old man chuckled 
enigmatically. “They’s ignorant critters, they is; 
but they knows enough not to break they own heads, 
they do.” 

“You have heard of the inquisition?” persisted 
Lonsdale. 

“ Guess I have. Seen the cussed critters when I 
was at Cadiz in the ‘Jehu:’ that’s nineteen years 
ago last summer. Never had none here to Orleans, 
never but once! ” And this time he chuckled 
triumphantly. “ They did n’t stay long then, they 
did n’t. Went off quicker than they come, they did. 
I know um. Cussed critters.” 

Lonsdale was curious, and asked for an explanation. 


or, Show your Passports 31 3 

The old man’s face beamed delight. He looked 
up to the stars, and told this story: — 

“ Best guv’nor they ever had, over there to Or¬ 
leans, was a man named Miro. Spoke English heself 
most as well as I do. Married Miss Maccarty, he 
did — pretty Irish girl Was n’t no real Spanisher 
at all. Well, one day, they comes one of these dirty 
rascals with a rope’s end round him — brown blanket 
coat on—comes up from Cuba, he does — comes to 
Guv’nor Miro. Guv’nor Miro asked him to din¬ 
ner, he did, and gin him his quarters. Then the 
cussed fool sends a note to the guv’nor, he says, sez 
he, that these underground critters, these Inky Sijoan 
they calls um over there; they’d sent him, they had, 
says he; and mebbe he should want a file o’ soldiers 
some night. Says so in a letter to the guv’nor. So 
the guv’nor, he thought, ef Old Nightgown wanted 
the soldiers he ’d better have um. ’N’ he sent round 
a sergeant ’n’ a file of men that night, he did, at mid¬ 
night, ’n’ waked up Old Nightgown in his bed. ’N’ 
Old Nightgown says, says he, he was much obliged, 
but that night he did n’t need um. But the sergeant 
says, says he, that he needed Old Nightgown, ’n’ as 
soon as the old fool got his rawhide shoes tied on, 
the corporal marched him down to the levee, 'n’ sent 
him off to Cadiz, he did; ’n’ that’s the last time the 
Inky Sijoan men come here—’n’ the fust time too. 
Guv’nor Miro the best guv’nor they ever had over 
there. Half Englishman.” 

Lonsdale appreciated the compliment. His cigar 
was finished. He bade the old man good-night and 
turned in. 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


3H 


CHAPTER XXVI 

HOMEWARD BOUND 

“ So they resolved, the morrow next ensuing. 

So soon as day appeared to people’s viewing, 

On their intended journey to proceed ; 

And overnight whatso thereto did need 
Each did prepare, in readiness to be. 

The morrow next, so soon as one might see 
Light out of heaven’s windows forth to look, 

They their habiliments unto them took, 

And put themseives, in God’s name, on their way.” 

Mother Hlibber (Vs Tale. 

So short a journey as that from San Antonio to the 
Gulf seemed nothing to travellers so experienced as 
Miss Perry and her niece. As for the White Hawk, 
she was never so happy as in the open air, and es¬ 
pecially as on horseback. She counted all time lost 
that was spent elsewhere, and was frank enough to 
confess that she thought that they had all escaped 
from a feverish wild dream, or what was as bad as 
such, in coming away from those close prison walls. 
The glorious weather of October, in a ride over the 
prairies in one of the loveliest regions of the world, 
could not but raise the spirits of all the ladies; and 
Mr. Lonsdale might well congratulate himself on the 
successful result of his bold application to Miss 
Perry. 

As they approached the Gulf, he kept some look¬ 
outs well in advance, in hope of sighting the boat or 
boats from the “ Firefly ” which he expected. But 


or. Show your Passports 315 

Friday night came with no report from these men; 
and, although they had not returned, he was fain to 
order a halt, after conference with Ransom, on a little 
flat above a half-bluff which looked down upon the 
stream. The short twilight closed in on them as 
they made their supper. But after the supper was 
finished, as they strolled up and down before going 
to bed, a meteor, far more brilliant than any shooting 
star could be so near the horizon, rose above the 
river in the eastern distance; and as they all won¬ 
dered another arose, and yet another. “ Rockets ! ” 
cried Mr. Lonsdale, well pleased. “ Roberts has 
found them; and this is their short-hand way of 
telling us that they are at hand. — William,” he said, 
turning to the thoroughly respectable servant who in 
top-boots and buckskins followed his wanderings in 
these deserts, — “ William, find something which you 
can show to them.” The man of all arts disappeared ; 
and, while the girls were yet looking for another 
green star in the distance, they were startled by the 
I “shirr-r” of a noisy rocket which rose close above 
their own heads, and burst beautiful above the still 
waters. Another and another followed in quick suc¬ 
cession, and the reply was thus secure. The White 
Hawk was beside herself with delight. She watched 
the firing of No. 2 as Eunice might have watched the 
skilful manipulations of Madame Le Brun. William 
I was well pleased by her approbation. He did not 
> bend much from the serenity of a London valet’s 
bearing, but he did permit the White Hawk herself 
to apply the burning brand to the match of the third 
rocket. The girl screamed with delight a§ she saw 




316 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

it burst, and as the falling stick plunged into the 
river. 

“ To-morrow morning, Miss Inez, your foot is on 
the deck, and these pleasant wanderings of ours are 
over forever.” Even Inez’s severity toward the man 
she tried to hate gave way at his display — so diffi¬ 
cult for a man of his make — of emotion which was 
certainly real and deep. 

“ But, Mr. Lonsdale, no Englishman will convince 
me that he is sorry to be on the sea.” 

“ Cela depend. I shall be sorry if the sea parts me 
from near and dear friends.” 

“ As if I meant to be sentimental with old Chis¬ 
holm or Conolly, because he had been good to us! ” 
This was Inez’s comment as she repeated the conver¬ 
sation to her aunt afterward. “ I was not going to 
be affectionate to him.” 

“What did you say? ” asked Eunice, laughing. 

“ I said I was afraid Ma-ry would be seasick,” said 
the reckless girl. “ I thought that would take off the 
romance for him.” None the less could Eunice see 
that the rancor of her rage and hatred was much 
abated, as is the fortune often of the wild passions of 
that age of discretion which comes at eighteen years. 

Mr. Lonsdale had not promised more than he per¬ 
formed. Before the ladies were astir the next morn¬ 
ing, two boats were at an improvised landing below 
the tents. Ransom had transferred to them already all 
the packs from the mules ; and there needed only that 
breakfast should be over, and the ladies’ last “ traps ” 
were embarked also, and they were themselves on 
board. A boatswain in charge received Mr. Lons- 


or, Show your Passports 317 

dale with tokens of respect which did not escape 
Inez’s eye. As for the White Hawk, she was beside 
herself with wonder at the movements of craft so 
much more powerful than anything to which the 
little river of San Antonio had trained her. As the 
sun rose higher the seamen improvised an awning. 
The current of the river, such as it was, aided them; 
and before two o’clock the little party was on the 
deck of the “Firefly” in the offing. 

Nothing is prettier than the eagerness of self- 
surrender with which naval officers always receive 
women on their ships. The chivalry of a gentleman, 
the homesickness of an exile, the enthusiasm of a 
host, — all unite to welcome those whose presence 
is so rare that they are made all the more comfort¬ 
able because there is no provision for them in a state 
of nature. In this case the gentlemen had had some 
days’ notice that the ladies might be expected. 

It was clear that Lonsdale was quite at home 
among them, and was a favorite. Even the old salts 
who stood at the gangway smiled approval of him as 
he stepped on board. He presented young Drapier 
and Clerk, the two lieutenants who held the first and 
second rank; and then, with careful impartiality, the 
group of midshipmen who stood behind. Then he 
spoke to every one of them separately. “ Good news 
from home, Bob? Mr. Anson, I hope the admiral is 
well; and how is your excellent father, Mr. Pigot?” 
A moment more, and a bronzed, black-browed man, 
in a military undress, came out from the companion. 
He smiled as he gave his hand to Lonsdale, who 
owned his surprise at meeting him. 



318 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ Miss Perry,” said lie at once, “ here is one friend 
more, whom you have heard of but never seen. One 
never knows where to look for the general,” he said, 
laughing, “ or I also should be surprised. Let me 
present to you General Bowles, Miss Perry. Miss 
Inez, this is General Bowles, — I think I might say 
a friend of your father’s.” 

This extraordinary man smiled good-naturedly, 
and said, — 

“ Yes, a countryman of yours and of your brother’s, 
Miss Perry; and all countrymen are friends. The 
people in Orleans do not love me as well as I love 
the Americans who live among them,” 

Eunice was not disposed to be critical. “ Mr. 
Lonsdale is very kind; and I am sure we poor wan¬ 
dering damsels are indebted to all these gentlemen 
for their welcome,” said she. She had learned long 
since, that in times like hers, and in such surround¬ 
ings, she must not discriminate too closely as to the 
antecedents of those with whom she had to do. Inez 
could afford to have “hates” and “instincts,” like 
most young ladies of her age. But Eunice had 
passed thirty, and was willing to accept service 
from Galaor, if by ill luck she could not com¬ 
mand the help of Amadis. The truth was, that Gen¬ 
eral Bowles had been known to her only as a chief 
of marauding Highlanders might have been known 
to a lady of Edinburgh. For many years he had 
been, in the Spanish wars against England, the daring 
commander of the savage allies of the English. He 
was her countryman, because he was born in Mary¬ 
land. But, as soon as General Howe came to Phila- 


or. Show your Passports 3 1 9 

delphia, Bowles had enlisted as a boy in the British 
army. It was after the most wild life that ever an 
adventurer led, — now in dungeons and now in 
palaces, — that she met him on the deck of an 
English cutter. 

His eye fell upon Inez with the undisguised admi¬ 
ration with which men were apt to look on Inez. 
When he was presented to Ma-ry in turn, he was 
quick enough to recognize — he hardly could have 
told how — something of the savage training of this 
girl. She looked as steadily into his eye as he into 
hers. Compliment came into conversation with less 
disguise in those days than in these; and so the 
general did not hesitate to say, — 

“ But for that rich bloom, Miss Ma-ry, upon your 
cheek, I should have been glad to claim you as the 
daughter of a chief, — a chief among men who have 
not known how to write treaties, nor to break 
them.” 

Ma-ry probably did not follow his stately and 
affected sentence. 

“ My name on the prairies is the White Hawk,” 
said she simply. 

“Well named,” cried Bowles; and he looked to 
Eunice for an explanation, which of course she 
quickly gave. The passage was instantaneous, as 
among the group of courteous gentlemen the ladies 
were led to the cabin of the captain, which he had 
i relinquished for them; but it was the beginning of 
long conferences between General Bowles and the 
j White Hawk, in which, with more skill than Eunice 
had done, or even Harrod, lie traced out her scanty 



320 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

recollection of what her mother had told her of the 
life to which she was born. 

The stiffness of the reception and welcome of the 
ladies was broken, and all conversation for the mo¬ 
ment was made impossible, by the escape of two pets 
of the girls, from the arms of a sailor, who had at¬ 
tempted to bring them up the ladder. They were 
Chihuahua dogs, — pretty little creatures of the very 
smallest of the dog race, — which Lonsdale had pre¬ 
sented when he had returned to San Antonio, as 
one of the steps, perhaps, by which he might work 
into Inez’s variable favor. The little things found 
their feet on deck, and dashed about among swivels, 
cat-heads, casks, and other furniture, in a way which 
delighted the midshipmen, confounded the old sea¬ 
men, and set both the girls screaming with laughter. 
After such an adventure, and the recapture of Trip 
and Skip, formality was impossible; and, when the 
ladies disappeared into Lieutenant Drapier’s hospi¬ 
table quarters, all parties had the ease of manner 
of old friends. 

Ransom, with his own sure tact, and under the law 
of u natural selection,”—which was true before Dr. 
Darwin was born, — found his way at once into the 
company of the warrant-officers. Indeed, he might 
be well described by calling him a sort of warrant- 
officer, which means a man who takes much of the 
work and much of the responsibility of this world, and 
yet has very little of the honor. * As the men hauled 
up the little anchor, and got the boats on board, after 
Ransom had seen his share of luggage of the party 
fairly secured, an old sailor’s habits came over him; 




or, Show your Passports 321 

and he could hardly help, although a visitor, lending 
a hand. 

It was not the first time he had been on the deck 
of an English man-of-war; but never before had he 
been there as a distinguished visitor. He also, like 
his mistress, if Eunice were his mistress, knew how to 
conquer his prejudices. And, indeed, the order and 
precision of man-of-war’s-man’s style, after the slack¬ 
ness, indolence, and disobedience of the Greasers, 
was joy to his heart. He could almost have found it 
in him to exempt these neat English tars from the 
general doom which would fall on all “ fnrriners.” 
At the least, they could not speak French, Spanish, 
or Choctaw; and with this old quartermaster who 
offered him a lighted pipe, and with the boatswain 
who gave him a tough tarred hand, he could indulge 
in the vernacular. 

Hardly were these three mates established in a 
comfortable nook forward under the shade of the fore¬ 
sail, when an older man than the other Englishman 
presented himself, and tipped his hat to Ransom 
respectfully in a somewhat shamefaced fashion. 

The old man looked his surprise, and relieved the 
other’s doubts by giving him a hard hand-grip 
cordially. 

“ Why, Ben, boy, be ye here? Where did ye turn 
up from? ” 

The man said he enlisted in Jamaica two years 
before. 

“ Jes so, the old story. Can’t teach an old dog 
new tricks. Have some tobaccy, Ben? Perhaps all 
on ye will like to try the Greasers’ tobaccy. Et’s the 
21 




322 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

only thing they ’s got that’s good for anything, et 
is.” And he administered enormous plugs of the 
Mexican tobacco to each of his comrades, neither 
of whom was averse to a new experiment in that 
line. 

“ Woll, Ben, et’s a good many years since I see ye. 
See ye last the day Count Dystang sailed out o’ 
Bostin Harbor. Guess ye did n’t go aloft much that 
v’y’ge, Ben? ” 

The other laughed, and intimated that people did 
not go aloft easily when they had handcuffs on. The 
truth was, he had been a prisoner of war, and, under 
some arrangements made by the Committee of Safety, 
had been transferred to the French admiral’s care. 

“ ’N’ when did ye see Mr. Conolly, Ben? ” asked 
Ransom, with a patronizing air. 

The man said Mr. Conolly had never forgotten him, 
that “ he was good to him,” as his phrase was, and 
got him exchanged from the French fleet. But Mr. 
Conolly afterward went to Canada; and Ben had 
never heard from him again. 

“ I’ve heerd on him often,” said Ransom, with his 
eyes twinkling: “ Guv’nor o’ Kannydy sent him down 
here to spy out the country. Thort they wa’n’t no 
rope to hang him with, he did: did n’t know where 
hemp grew. Down comes Conolly, and he sees the 
gineral, that’s Wilkinson, up river; ’n’ he tells the 
gineral, and all the ginerals, they’d better fight for 
King George, he does, ’n’ that the king’s pay was 
better nor Gineral Washington’s. Darned fool, he 
was. Gineral Wilkinson fooled him. Major Dunn 
fooled him, all on urn fooled him. Thought he’d 


or, Show your Passports 323 

bought um all out, he did ! ” and Ransom chuckled 
in his happiest mood; “ thought he ’d bought um; 
’n’ jest then in come a wild fellow, — hunter, — V he 
asked where the English kurnel was, he did, ’n’ he 
says the redskins V the English ’d killed his father V 
mother; ’n’ he says he’ll have the kurnel’s scalp to 
pay for it; ’n’ after he hollered round some time, old 
Wilkinson he put him in irons, ’n’ sent him away; ’n’ 
then the kurnel — Conolly — he took on so, ’n’ was 
so afeerd he’d be scalped, that he asked the gineral 
for an escort, he did, ’n’ so he went home. Gineral 
gin the hunter a gallon o’ whiskey, ’n’ five pounds 
of powder, to come in there ’n’ holler round so.” 

And old Ransom contemplated the sky, in silent 
approval of the deceit. After a pause he said,— 

“ They wus some on um over there among the 
Greasers, though this man was Colonel Conolly” 
(pause again). “ They did n’t ask me, ’n’ I did n’t 
tell um. I knew better. I see Conolly when I see you 
fust, Ben” (grim smile), “when we put the irons 
on you aboard the ‘ Cerberus’ ’fore she went down. 
I knew Conolly.” Another pause; then, somewhat 
tentatively, —• 

“ This man I never see before; but he knows how 
to saddle his own horse, he does; ” this in approval, 
Lonsdale being “ this man ” referred to. 

The others said that they took “this man” into 
Vera Cruz the winter before, with his servants. The 
talk of the “ Firefly ” was, that while they had been 
sounding in Corpus Christi Bay they had been wait¬ 
ing for him. Who he was, they did not know, but 
believed he was First Lord of the Admiralty, or may- 



324 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

be a son of Lord Anson, or perhaps of some other 
grandee. 

“Ye don’t think he’s that one that was at New 
York, do you?” said Ransom. “ I mean the Juke, 
they called him — old king’s son. I come mighty 
near carrying him off myself one night, in a whale¬ 
boat.” 

The men showed little indignation at this allusion 
to Royal William, the Duke of Clarence, — “ by 
England’s navy all adored,” though that gentle¬ 
man was said to be. But they expressed doubts, 
though no one knew, whether Mr. Lonsdale were 
he. If he were, the midshipmen were either ig¬ 
norant or bold; for, when Inez compelled them to 
sing that evening they sang rapturously,— 

“ When Royal William comes on board, 

By England’s navy all adored, 

To him I sometimes pass the word, 

For I’m a smart young midshipman.” 

The White Hawk proved a better sailor than 
Eunice had dared to hope. Her wonder at what 
seemed to her the immense size of the little vessel, 
and at all its equipment and movement, was a delight 
to Inez and even to the less demonstrative Ransom. 
The young gentlemen were divided in their en¬ 
thusiastic attentions to these charming girls, and the 
three or four days of their little voyage were all too 
short for the youngsters; when, with a fresh north¬ 
west breeze, they entered the southwestern mouths 
of the great Mississippi River, and so long as this 
breeze served them held on to the main current 


or. Show your Passports 325 

of the stream. For that current itself, the breeze 
was dead ahead, and so the “ Firefly ” came again 
to an anchor, to the grief of the ladies more than 
of their young admirers. 

Eunice Perry and her “doves” had retired to 
dress for dinner, when, from a French brig which 
was at anchor hard by, a boat was dropped, which 
pulled hastily across to the Englishman. In these 
neutral waters there was no danger in any event, 
but a white handkerchief fluttered at her bow. A 
handsome young man in a French uniform ran up 
on the “Firefly’s” deck. He spoke a word to 
Captain Drapier, but hardly more; for, as they 
exchanged the first civilities, Eunice and Inez rushed 
forward from the companion, and Inez’s arms were 
around his neck. 

“ My dear, dear brother! ” 


CHAPTER XXVII 

HOME AS FOUND 

“And I will see before I die 
The palms and temples of the South.” 

Tennyson. 

“Is it not perfectly lovely?” said Inez to her 
brother, as she ran ashore over the little plank 
laid for a gangway. “Is it not perfectly lovely?” 
And she flung her arms about him, and kissed 
him, as her best way of showing her delight that 
she and he were both at home. 




326 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

“ You are, pussy,” said Roland, receiving the 
caress with as much enthusiasm as she gave it with; 
“ and so is the White Hawk, whom I will never 
call Ma-ry; and to tell you the whole truth, and 
not to quarrel with you the first morning of home, 
dear old Orleans is not an unfit setting for such 
jewels. Oh, dear! how good it is to be at home!” 

The young officer seemed as young as Inez in his 
content; and Inez forgot her trials for the minute, 
in the joy of having him, of hearing him, and seeing 
him. 

So soon as Mr. Perry had understood the happy 
meeting at the river’s mouth, he also had boarded 
the “ Firefly.” Matters had indeed fallen out better 
than even he had planned; and the embarkation 
planned in grief by Eunice, and in what seemed 
loyalty by Mr. Lonsdale, proved just what all would 
have most desired. Mr. Perry had the pleasure of 
announcing to Lieutenant Drapier and the other 
English officers peace between England and France. 
They had heard of the hopes of this, but till now the 
announcement had lingered. At the little dinner im¬ 
provised on the deck of the “ Firefly,” many toasts 
were drunk to the eternal peace of England and 
France; but, alas ! the winds seem to have dispersed 
them before they arrived at any mint which stamped 
them for permanent circulation. 

With all due courtesies, Mr. Perry had then taken 
his own family on board the “ Antoinette,” a little 
brig which he had chartered at Bordeaux, that 
he might himself bring out this news. Of course 
he begged Mr. Lonsdale to join them as soon as 


or. Show your Passports 327 

he knew that that gentleman’s plan of travel was 
to take him to Orleans. Drapier and Clerk mani¬ 
fested some surprise when they learned of this 
plan of travel, as they had supposed the “Firefly” 
was to take him to Jamaica. They learned now, 
for the first time, that Lonsdale had errands at 
Fort Massac and the falls of the Ohio and Fort 
Washington. The young officers looked quizzically 
at each other behind his back, as if to ask how 
long he might be detained at Orleans. But who¬ 
ever Lonsdale was, and however good a friend he 
was, they did not dare to talk banter to him, — 
as Miss Inez and as Ransom did not fail to observe. 

So with long farewells, and promises to meet 
again, the two vessels parted. General Bowles said 
to Eunice, as he bade them good-by, that he was 
the only person on board the “ Firefly ” who was 
not raging with indignation at the change of plans. 
“ The middies are beside themselves,” he said. 
“ So, indeed, am I; but my grief is a little as¬ 
suaged by the recollection that Governor Salcedo 
would hang me in irons in fifteen minutes after the 
* Firefly’ arrived. True, this is a trifling price to 
pay for the pleasure of sailing along the coast with 
three charming ladies; but if I do not pay it, I 
have the better chance to see them again.” 

“ And also,” he added more gravely, “ I have the 
better chance to learn something of this Apache 
raid in which your interesting charge was carried 
from home, of which, Miss Perry, I will certainly 
inform you.” 

The “ Antoinette ” had slowly worked her way up 



328 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

the stream. At nightfall, on the second night, she 
was still thirty miles from the city. But, as the sun 
rose on the morning of the third day, Roland had 
tapped at the door of the ladies’ cabin, and had told 
them that they were at the levee in front of the town. 
Of course Inez and Ma-ry were ready for action in a 
very few moments; and, as Roland waited eager for 
them, they joined him for a little ramble, in which 
Inez should see his delight as he came home, and 
both of them should see Ma-ry’s wonder. 

It is hard even for the resident in New Orleans 
of to-day to carry himself back to the little fortified 
town which Inez so rejoiced to see. As it happens, 
we have the ill-tempered narrative which a Monsieur 
Duvallar, a cockney Parisian, gave, at just the same 
time, of his first impressions. But he saw as a 
seasick Frenchman eager to see the streets of Paris 
sees: Inez saw as a happy girl sees, who from her 
first wanderings returns home with so much that she 
loves best. The first wonder to be seen was a 
wonder to Inez as to the others: it was the first I 
vessel ever built in Ohio to go to sea. She lay in 
the stream, proudly carrying the American colors at 
each peak, and was the marvel of the hour. But Inez 
cared little for schooners, brigs, or ships. 

She hurried her brother to the Place d’Armes, which 1 
separated the river from two buildings, almost Moorish 
in their look, which were the public offices, and which 
were separated by the quaint cathedral,— another bit 
of Old Spain. Over wooden walks, laid upon the j 
clay of the banquette or sidewalk, she hurried him 
through one and another narrow street, made up of , 



or. Show your Passports 329 

square wooden houses, never more than a story high, 
and always offering a veranda or “ galerie” to the 
street front. Between the banquette and the roadway, 
a deep gutter, neatly built, gave room for a little 
brook, if one of the pitiless rains of the country 
happened to flood the town. Little bridges across 
these gutters, made by the elongation of the wooden 
walks, required, at each street-crossing, a moment’s 
care on the part of the passenger. All this, to the 
happy Inez, was of course; to the watchful White 
Hawk, was amazement; and to Roland all was sur¬ 
prise, that in so many thousand details he had for¬ 
gotten how the home of his childhood differed from 
the Paris of his manly life. The fine fellow chattered 
as Inez chattered, explained to the White Hawk as 
he thought she needed, and was every whit as happy 
as Inez wanted him to be. “ There is dear Monsieur 
Le Bourgeois. He does not see us. Monsieur! 
Monsieur! You have not forgotten us, have you? 
Here is little Inez back again. And how are they at 
Belmont? Give ever so much love to them ! ” And 
then, as she ran on, “ And there is Jean Audubon ! 
Jean, Jean! ” and when the handsome young fellow 
crossed the street, and gave her both hands, “ Oh, I 
have such beautiful heron’s wings for you from An¬ 
tonio ; and Ransom has put up two nice chapparal 
birds for you, and a crane. I made Major Barelo 
shoot him for me. And, Jean! did you ever see a 
Chihuahua dog? Ma-ry and I have two, —the pret¬ 
tiest creatures you ever did see. This is Ma-ry, Mr. 
Audubon. — How do you do, Madame Fourchet? 
We are all very well, I thank you.” 



330 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

So they walked back from the river, — not many 
squares: the houses were farther and farther apart; 
and at last a long fence, made of cypress boards 
roughly split, and higher than their heads, parted 
them from a garden of trees and shrubs blazing with 
color and with fruit. The fence ran along the whole 
square; and now the little Inez fairly flew along the 
ba7iquette till she came to a gateway which gave pas¬ 
sage into the garden. Here she instantly struck a 
bell which hung just within the fence; and there, 
protected by a rough shelter, — a sort of wooden 
awning, arranged for the chance of rain, — she 
jumped with impatience as she waited for the others 
to arrive, and for some one within to open. She had 
not to wait long. In a minute Ransom flung the gate 
open, and the girl stood within the garden of her 
father’s house. The old man had landed long before 
them, and had come up to.the house to satisfy him¬ 
self that all was fit for the family and its guests. 

“ Come, Ma-ry, come! ” cried Inez, as she dashed ' 
along a winding brick alley, between palm-trees and 
roses, and myrtles and bananas, oranges in fruit, 
great masses of magnolia cones beginning to grow 
red, and the thousand other wonders of a well-kept 
garden in this most beautiful of cities, in a climate 
which is both temperate and tropical, at one time. 

“ Oh, come, Ma-ry ! do come, Roland ! Welcome 
home ! welcome home ! ” 

She dashed up the broad high steps of the pretty 
house, to a broad veranda, or “ gallery,” near twelve 
feet deep, which surrounded it on every side. Doors 
flung wide open gave entrance to a wide hall which 


or, Show your Passports 331 

ran quite through the. house, a double door of 
Venetian blind closing the hall at the other end. 

On either side, large doors opened into very high 
rooms, the floors of which, of a shining cypress wood, 
were covered in the middle by mats and carpets. 
The shade of the “gallery” was sufficient in every 
instance to keep even the morning sunlight of that 
early hour from the rooms. Ransom’s forethought 
and that of a dozen negro servants who were waiting, 
to welcome her, had already made the rooms gor¬ 
geous with flowers. 

The happy girl had a word for every Chloe and 
Miranda and Zenon and Antoine of all the waiting 
group; and then she was beside herself as she tried 
at once to enjoy Roland’s satisfaction, and to in¬ 
troduce Ma-ry to her new home. It was impossible 
to be disappointed. Roland was as well pleased and 
as happy as she could wish; and, because she was 
so happy, the White Hawk was happy too. 

“ See, Roland, here is the picture of Madame 
Josephine you sent us. And here is your great First 
Consul; and very handsome he is too, though he is 
so stern. I should think Madame Bonaparte would 
be afraid of him. See, I hung them here. Papa had 
hung them just the other way, and you see they 
looked away from each other. But I told him that 
would never do: it seemed as if they had been 
quarrelling.” 

“ Madame’s picture is not good enough, as I told 
you when I sent it. The General’s is better. But 
nothing gives his charming smile. You must make 
papa tell you of that. I wish we had Eugene’s. If 



332 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

lie becomes the great general he means to be, we 
shall have his picture engraved and framed by the 
general’s side.” 

“ Oh! there are to be no more wars, you know. 
Eugene will be a planter, and raise sugar, as his father 
did. We shall never hear of General Beauharnais 
again.” 

And then she had to take Ma-ry into her own 
room, and show her all the arrangements in which a 
young girl delights. And Ransom was made happy 
by seeing Mr. Roland again at home. And these 
joys of a beginning were not well over before the car¬ 
riage arrived from the “ Antoinette,” with the more 
mature elders of the party, who had not been above 
taking things easily, and riding from the levee to the 
house. 

But it was impossible not to see at breakfast that 
Mr. Perry was silent and sad, in the midst of all his 
effort to be hospitable to Mr. Lonsdale, and to make 
his son’s return cheerful. And at last, when break¬ 
fast was over, he said frankly, “We are all so far 
friends, that I may as well tell you what has grieved 
me. Panton came on board as we left the vessel. 

“ He tells me that this horrid business yonder has 
been too much for the poor girl.” 

Inez’s face was as pale as a sheet. She had never 
spoken to her father of the beautiful lady whose 
picture Philip Nolan had showed her. She had 
always supposed that there was a certain confidence 
or privacy about his marriage to Fanny Lintot; and, 
as the reader knows, not even to Eunice had she 
whispered it before they heard of his death. But 


or, Show your Passports 333 

now it was clear that her father knew; and he knew 
more than she knew. 

“Yes,” continued Mr. Perry. .“There is a child 
who will never remember his father and mother. 
But this pretty Fanny Lintot, not even the child 
could keep her alive. ‘ What should I wish to live 
for ? ’ the poor child said. ‘ I shall never know what 
happiness is in this world. I did not think I should 
be so fortunate as to join my dear Phil so soon.’ 
And so she joined him.” 

Poor Inez! She could not bear this. She ran 
out of the room, and the White Hawk followed her. 

CHAPTER XXVIII 

“ Who saw the Duke of Clarence ? ” 

Henry IV. 

“ Aunt Eunice,” said Roland, with all his own im¬ 
petuosity, when they had all met for dinner, “ there 
is no such soup as a gumbo file, — no, not at Mal- 
maison. Crede experto , which means, my dear aunt, 

‘ I know what I am talking about.’ And, as Madame 
Casa Calvo is not here, you may help me again.” 

“ Dear Roland, I will help you twenty times,” said 
his aunt, who was as fond of him as his mother would 
have been, and, indeed, quite as proud. “ I am glad 
we can hold our own with Malmaison in anything.” 

“ We beat Malmaison in many things. We beat 
Malmaison in roses, though Mademoiselle Hortense 
has given me a ‘ Souvenir ’ from there, before which 
old Narcissewill bow down in worship. But we have 
more than roses. We beat Malmaison in pretty 


334 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

girls,” this with a mock bow to the White Hawk and 
to Inez; “ and we beat her in gumbo.” 

“ How is it in soldiers, Mr. Perry?” said Mr. Lons¬ 
dale, with some real curiosity. “ And is it true that 
we are to see the renowned General Victor here with 
an army? ” 

“That you must ask my father,” said the young 
fellow boldly. “ He is the diplomatist of the family. 
I dare say he has settled it all with Madame Jose¬ 
phine, while I was obtaining from Mademoiselle 
Hortense some necessary directions about the dress¬ 
ing of my sister’s hair. — My dear Inez, it is to be 
cut short in front, above the eyebrows, and to flow 
loosely behind, a la Naiade ajfranchie .” 

“Nonsense! ” said Inez. “Did not Mademoiselle 
Hortense tell you that ears were to be worn boxed 
on the right side and cuffed on the left? She was 
too kind to your impudence.” 

“She made many inquiries regarding yours. And, 
dear Aunt Eunice, she asked me many questions 
which I could not answer. Now that I arrive upon 
the Father of Waters, I am prudent and docile. I 
whisper no word which may awake the proud Span¬ 
iard against the hasty Gaul or the neutral American. 
I reveal no secret, Mr. Lonsdale, in the presence of 
the taciturn Briton: all the same I look on and 
wonder. The only place for my inquiries — where I 
can at once show my modesty and my ignorance — 
is at the hospitable board of Miss Eunice Perry. 
She soothes me with gumbo fil6, she bribes me with 
red-fish and pompano ; in the distance I see cotelettes 
and vol-au-vents, and I know not what else, which 


or, Show your Passports 335 

she has prepared to purchase my silence. All the 
same, I throw myself at the feet of this company, 
own my gross ignorance, and ask for light. 

“ Let me, dear Mr. Lonsdale, answer your ques¬ 
tion as I can. Many generals have I met, in battle, 
in camp, or in the ballroom. General Bonaparte is 
my protector; General Moreau examined me in 
tactics; General Casa Bianca is my friend; General 
Hamilton is my distinguished countryman. But 
who, my dear Aunt Eunice, is General Bowles? and 
of what nation was the somewhat remarkable uniform 
which he wore the day I had the honor to meet you, 
and to assure you that you had grown young under 
your anxieties for your nephew?” 

Now, if there were a subject which Eunice would 
have wished them to avoid at that moment, it was 
the subject which the audacious young fellow had 
introduced. 

In spite of her, her face flushed. 

“ He served against the Spaniards at Pensacola,” 
said she, with as much calmness as she could com¬ 
mand. Everybody was looking at her, so that she 
could not signal him to silence; and Mr. Lonsdale 
was close at her side, so that he heard every word. 

“A countryman of yours, Mr. Lonsdale? Where, 
then, was the red coat? where the Star and Garter?” 

Lonsdale was not quick enough to follow this 
badinage; or he was perhaps as much annoyed as 
Eunice, that the subject was opened. 

“ General Bowles is not in the king’s service,” he 
said; “yet he is well thought of at the Foreign 
Office. I dined with him at Lord Hawksbury’s.” 



336 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“At Lord Hawksbury’s? ” said Mr. Perry, sur¬ 
prised out of the silence he had maintained all 
along. 

Lonsdale certainly was annoyed this time, and 
annoyed at his own carelessness; for he would not 
have dropped the words, had he had a moment for 
thought. His face flushed, but he said,— 

“Yes. It was rather a curious party. General 
Miranda was there, who means to free Mexico and 
Cuba and the Spanish main, — the South American 
Washington of the future, Miss Inez. This General 
Bowles was there, in the same fanciful uniform he 
wears to-day. There was an attache of your legation 
there, I forget his name; and no end of people who 
spoke no English. But I understood that General 
Bowles was an American. I did not suppose I 
should be the person to introduce him to you.” 

“Why does Lord Hawksbury ask General Bowles 
to meet General Miranda, sir?” said Roland, turning 
to his father. 

“ Why do I ask an tttve of the iJcole Polytechnique 
to meet Mr. Lonsdale? — Mr. Lonsdale, that Bor¬ 
deaux wine is good; but, if you hold to your island 
prejudices, Ransom shall bring us some port which 
my own agent bought in Portugal.” 

“ I hold by the claret,” said Lonsdale, relieved, as 
Roland thought, that the subject was at an end. 
Now, Roland had no thought of relieving him. If 
Englishmen came to America, he meant to make 
them show their colors. 

“ No man tells me,” he said, “ what nation that is 
whose major-generals wear green frock-coats cut like 


or, Show your Passports 337 

Robin Hood’s with wampum embroidered on the 
cuffs. I am only told that this unknown nation is in 
alliance with King George and General Miranda.” 

“ General Bowles is the chief of an Indian tribe 
in this region, I think,” said Lonsdale, rather 
stiffly. 

“ Oho ! ” cried the impetuous young fellow, “ and 
the Creeks and the Greasers, with some assistance 
from Lord Hawksbury and King George, are to drive 
the King of Spain out of Mexico. Is that on the 
cards, Mr. Lonsdale?” 

Lonsdale looked more confused than ever. 

“You must ask your father, Mr. Perry. He is the 
diplomatist, you say.” 

“ But is this what the Governor of Canada is 
bothering about? Is this what he sent Chisholm and 
Conolly for, sir?” said Roland, turning to his. father. 
“ Not so bad a plot, if it is.” 

The truth is, that Roland’s head was turned with 
the military atmosphere in which he had lived ; and, 
like half the youngsters of his time, he hoped that 
some good cause might open up, in which he, too, 
could win spurs and glory. 

At the allusion to Chisholm and Conolly, two 
secret agents of the Canadian Government in the 
Valley of the Mississippi, Inez turned to look gravely 
upon her aunt. As, by good luck, Mr. Lonsdale’s 
face was also turned toward Eunice, Inez seized the 
happy opportunity to twirl her knife as a chief might 
his scalping-knife. Ma-ry understood no little of the 
talk, but managed, savage-like, to keep her reserve. 
Mr. Perry felt his son’s boldness, and was troubled by 
22 




338 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

it. He knew that all this talk must be annoying to 
the Englishman. 

“ The plot was a very foolish plot, Roland, if it 
were such a plot as you propose. If John Adams 
had been chosen president again, instead of this man 
who is called so pacific, — if some things had not 
been done on the other side which have been done, 
— I think General Hamilton might have brought a 
few thousand of our countrymen down the river* with 
General Wilkinson to show him the way. Mr. Lons¬ 
dale can tell you whether Admiral Nelson would have 
been waiting here with a fleet; they do say there 
have been a few frigates in the Gulf: as it is, all I 
know is, that fortunately for us we found the ‘ Firefly * 
there. Mr. Lonsdale knows, perhaps, whether a few 
regiments from Canada might not have joined our 
men in the excursion. But we have changed all 
that, my boy; and you must take your tactics and 
your strategies to some other field of glory.” 

The truth was, that all the scheme of which Mr. 
Perry spoke had been wrought out in the well-kept 
secrecy of John Adams’s cabinet. As he said him¬ 
self once, such talent as he had was for making war, 
more than for making peace. 

As it proved, the majestic and to us friendly policy 
of the great Napoleon gave us Louisiana without a 
blow; but in the long line of onslaughts upon Spain, 
which the United States have had to do with, this 
was the first. 

The first Adams is the historical leader of the 
filibusters. 

Miss Inez did not care a great deal about the 





or. Show your Passports 339 

politics of the conversation. What she did care for 
was, that Lonsdale appeared to be uncomfortable. 
This delighted her. Was he Chisholm? was he 
Conolly? Her father had hushed up Roland, with a 
purpose. She could see that. But she did not see 
that this involved any cessation in that guerilla war 
with which he persecuted the Englishman. 

“ That must have been a very interesting party 
which you describe, Mr. Lonsdale. Is Lord Hawks- 
bury a good talker?” 

“Yes — hardly—no, Miss Perry. He talks as 
most of those men in office do: he is all things to 
all men.” 

“Was the Duke of Clarence there?” said Inez, 
with one bold, wild shot. Since Ransom had ex¬ 
pressed the opinion that their guest was this gentle¬ 
man, Inez was determined to know. 

Lonsdale’s face flushed fire this time; or she 
thought it did. 

“ The duke was there,” he said: “ it was just 

before he sailed for Halifax.” 

But here Eunice came to his relief. She looked 
daggers at the impertinent girl, asked Mr. Lonsdale 
some question as to Lieutenant Drapier, and Inez 
and Roland were both so far hushed that no further 
secrets of state were discussed on that occasion. 





340 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER XXIX 

“WHERE SHALL SHE GO?” 

“ From her infant days, 

With Wisdom, mother of retired thoughts, 

Her soul had dwelt; and she was quick to mark 
The good and evil thing, in human lore 
Undisciplined.” 

Coleridge. 

The White Hawk dropped into her new life with a 
simplicity and naturalness which delighted every¬ 
body. From the beginning Silas Perry was charmed 
with her. It was not that he tolerated her as he 
would have tolerated any person whom Eunice had 
thought best to introduce to his house: it was that by 
rapid stages he began by liking her, then was fond of 
her, and then loved her. She was quite mistress of 
the spoken English, so much so that Inez began to 
fear that she would lose her pretty savage idioms 
and fascinating blunders. Indeed, there were a few 
Apache phrases which Inez insisted on retaining, 
with some slight modifications, in their daily conver¬ 
sation. How much French and Spanish the girl 
understood, nobody but herself knew. She never 
spoke in either language. 

It would be almost fair to say that Roland taught 
her more than Inez did. In the first place, he taught 
Inez a good deal which it was well for a provincial 
girl— a girl of two cities as petty as Orleans and San 
Antonio — to learn, if she could learn it from her 



or,Show your Passports 341 

brother, seeing her life had been so much restricted, 
and her outlook so much circumscribed. Roland was 
quick and impulsive; so, indeed, was the White 
Hawk; but he was always patient in explaining him¬ 
self to her, and he would not permit Inez, for mere 
love’s sake or fancy’s sake, to overlook little sav¬ 
ageries, as he called them, in the girl’s habit or life, 
merely because they seemed pretty to her. “ She is 
an American girl,” said he: “by the grace of God 
you have rescued her from these devils, and she shall 
never be annoyed by having people call her a red¬ 
skin.” And never had teacher a quicker pupil, never 
had Mentor a Telemachus more willing, than the 
White Hawk proved to be under the grave tutelage 
of Inez and her brother. 

These pages, which are transparent as truth her¬ 
self, may here reveal one thing more. The present 
reader, also, has proved herself sharp-sighted as 
Lynceus since she engaged in reading these humble 
annals of the past. This reader has observed, there¬ 
fore, from the moment the “Firefly” met the “An¬ 
toinette ” in the South Pass, that the handsome 
young American gentleman and the beautiful girl 
rescued from captivity were placed in very near pro¬ 
pinquity to each other, and that they remained so. 
The author has not for a moment veiled this fact 
from the reader, who is, indeed, too sharp-sighted to 
be trifled with. 

It is now to be stated that the White Hawk 
observed it quite as soon as the reader has done. 
The White Hawk maintained a very simple as it was 
a very intimate and sweet relation with Roland Perry 




342 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

whenever she and he were with Inez and Eunice, or 
the rest of the group which daily gathered at his 
father’s. But the White Hawk very seldom found 
herself alone with Roland Perry; and, when she did, 
the interview was a very short one. Roland found 
himself sometimes retiring early from the counting- 
room, wishing that she might be in the way. But 
she never was in the way. He would prepare one 
and another expedition to the lake, to the plantation- 
house, and the like. On such expeditions the White 
Hawk went freely if the whole party went; but not 
for a walk or ride out to the English Turn, did she 
go with him alone. Roland Perry did not know 
whether this was accident or no, did not even ask, 
perhaps. But it is as well that this reader should 
understand the girl, and should know it was no acci¬ 
dent at all. 

One day they had all gone together to a pretty 
meadow by the lake, under the pretence of seeing 
some races which the officers of the garrison had ar¬ 
ranged. Roland took the occasion to try his chances 
in sounding Ma-ry about a matter where he had not 
had full success in his consultations with his aunt. 

“ Ma-ry,” said he, “ tell me about the night when 
Inez was lost in Texas, — by the river, you know.” 

“Oh, poor Inez! She was so tired! she was so 
cold! ” 

“ How in the world did you find her? ” 

“ Oh, ho ! Easy to find her! I went where she 
went. Footstep here, footstep there, footstep all 
along. Leaf here and leaf there — broken leaf, torn 
leaf— all along. Then I heard her cry. She cried 



or, Show your Passports 343 

war-whoop, — hoo, hoo, hoo ! —just as I taught her 
one day. Easy to find her.” 

“ And you brought her in on your back? ” 

“No: nonsense, Mr. Perry. You know she came 
on foot, the same as she walks now with Mr. 
Lonsdale.” 

“And the others — were they all at home while 
you looked for her?” 

“At home? Dear aunty was by the fire, waiting, 
and praying to the good God. Ransom, he built up 
the fire, made it burn, so I saw the smoke, red 
smoke, high, high, above the black-jacks and the 
hack-berries. Black men, — some at home, some 
away. All the rest were gone.” 

“This Captain Harrod,—where was he, Ma-ry?” 

“Oh! Captain Harrod? Captain Will Harrod? 
Captain Harrod rode, — had rode, — no, Captain 
Harrod had ridden back. All wrong; all wrong. 
Had ridden back on the trail — on the old trail; 
ridden fast, ridden well, ridden brave, but all wrong. 
Had ridden back to camp where we had lunch that 
same day. All wrong. Poor Captain Harrod! ” 

“ Why did he ride back, Ma-ry, if it was all 
wrong? ” 

“ Captain Harrod not know. Captain Harrod saw 
Inez’s footmark. Captain Harrod saw it was mocca¬ 
sin mark; all the same moccasin Inez wore at 
breakfast this morning. Captain Harrod see mocca¬ 
sin mark; no, saw moccasin mark. Captain Har¬ 
rod thought it Apache boy; thought Apaches caught 
Inez, — carry her away, same like they carry Ma-ry 
away — carry me away.” 




344 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

“ And he went after them? ” 

“ All men went, — all but Ransom and the black 
men and Richards. All went — rode fast, fast — very 
fast; and found no Inez.” 

And the girl laughed. “ Inez all happy by the 
fire. Inez all asleep in the tent.” 

“ Ma’-ry, was Captain Harrod very good to Inez? ” 

And so you think, Master Roland Perry, that, be¬ 
cause this girl is a savage, you are going to draw 
your sister’s secrets out of her, do you? Much do 
you know of the loyalty of women to women, when 
they choose to be loyal. 

“ Captain Harrod very good to Inez, very good to 
aunty, very good to Ma-ry; ” this with the first look 
analogous to coquetry that Roland had ever seen in 
his pupil. 

“ Good to everybody, eh? And who rode with 
Captain Harrod, or with whom did he ;*ide as you 
travelled? Who rode with Inez? Who rode with 
you ? ” 

“ I rode with him, aunty rode with him; ” and 
then, correcting herself, “ he rode with me: he rode 
with aunty. Aunty very pleasant with him. Talk, 
talk, talk, all morning. I not understand them. 
Talk, talk, talk. Inez and Ma-ry ride together.” 

This was a combination of pieces which Roland 
had not thought of. He followed out the hint. 

“How old was Captain Harrod, Ma-ry? ” 

“Old? I do not know. He never said; I never 
asked.” 

“ No, no! you never asked; but was he as old as 
Ransom? Was he as old as my father? ” 



345 


or. Show your Passports 

Ma-ry laughed heartily. 

“ No, no ! No, no, no ! ” 

“ Was he as old as — Mr. Lonsdale there?” 

“ Me no know — I mean I do not know. Mr. 
Lonsdale never tell me; ” and she laughed again. 

“ Which was older, — Harrod or Nolan? ” 

“ Oh! I never see, I never seed — I never saw 
Captain Phil. Captain Nolan all gone before I saw 
Inez. I saw Inez at Nacogdoches.” 

“ And did Inez like Captain Harrod very much, 
Ma-ry?” 

“ Oh, ho! I think so. I like him very much. 
Aunty, oh! aunty like him very much. Oh! I 
think Inez like him very much. Ask her, Mr. 
Roland; ask her.” And the girl called, “Inez, my 
darling, Inez, come here! ” 

But Inez did not hear: perhaps it was not meant 
that she should hear. 

“ No, no! ” said Master Roland, interrupting, but 
so much of a man still that he did not know that this 
little savage girl was playing with him. “ Do not 
call her. She can tell me what she chooses. But, 
Ma-ry dear, what makes Inez unhappy? When she 
is alone, she cries: I know she does. I see her eyes 
are red. When she is with us all, she laughs and 
talks more than she wants to. She makes believe, 
Ma-ry. Ma-ry, what is the trouble, the sorrow of 
Inez?” 

No, Roland : Ma-ry is very fond of Inez, and she is 
very fond of you ; but if you want Inez’s secrets you 
must go to Inez for them. This girl of the woods 
will not betray them. 




346 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Inez very, very fond of Captain Phil Nolan. Inez 
very, very sorry for poor lady who is dead, and little 
baby boy. When Captain Phil Nolan was here, here 
in Orleans, Captain Phil Nolan told her, told Inez, all 
story, — all the story of beautiful girl who is dead. 
Fanny, — Fanny Lintot. Captain Phil Nolan showed 
Inez picture — pretty picture, — oh, so pretty ! — of 
Fanny Lintot. Told her secret. Inez told no one. 
No, Inez not tell aunty, not tell me. Now gone, all 
gone. Fanny Lintot dead. Captain Nolan dead. 
Only little, little baby boy. Poor Fanny Lintot! 
Poor Inez very sorry. But, Mr. Roland, you.not ask 
her. No, no, no ! do not ask her.” 

“ Not I r ” said Roland, led away by the girl’s eager¬ 
ness, and not aware, indeed, at the moment, that he 
had been foiled. 

Mr. Silas Perry had soon made the same remark 
which the eagle-eyed reader of these pages has made, 
that his son and his ward were thrown into very close 
“ propinquity ” and into very near communion. He 
had, or thought he had, reasons, not for putting an 
actual stop to it, but, on the other hand, for not en¬ 
couraging it; and he speculated not a little as to the 
best way to separate these young people a little more 
than in the easy circumstances of their daily life. He 
had consulted his sister once and again in his ques¬ 
tionings. She had proposed a removal to the plan¬ 
tation. But he dreaded to take this step. The 
exigencies of his business required his presence in 
the city almost every day. He was happy in his 
family; and, after so long a parting, he hated to be 
parted long again. 


or, Show your Passports 347 

Matters brought themselves to a crisis, however. 
He came into Eunice’s room one evening in serio¬ 
comic despair. 

“Eunice, you must do something with your Indian 
girl. She is on your hands, not on mine. What do 
you think? I saw something light outside the paling 
just now. I went out to see what it might be, in the 
gloaming; and there was Ma-ry, bobbing at a craw¬ 
fish hole for crawfish, as quietly as you are mending 
that stocking. She might have been little Dinah, for 
all anxiety about her position. She never dreamed, 
dear child, that it was out of the way.” 

“ What did you say?” said Eunice, laughing. 

“ It was not in my heart to scold her. I asked her 
what her luck was — ” 

“ And then looked for another crawfish hole, and 
sat down and fished by her side?” 

“No,” said he; “ not quite so bad as that. I told 
her it was late, that she must not stay out late; and 
she gathered up her prizes prettily, and brought them 
in. She never resists you a moment; that is the 
reason why she twirls us all round her fingers. I 
don’t know what to do. It would break Inez’s heart 
to send her away, not to say mine. She gave Chloe 
the crawfish for breakfast.” 

“There is Squam Bay?” said Eunice interroga¬ 
tively. 

“ I had thoughts of Squam Bay. Heavens, how 
she would upset the proprieties there ! I wonder 
what Parson Forbes would make of her. I would 
almost send her to Squam Bay for the fun of seeing 
the explosion. 


348 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ You see,” after a pause, “Squam Bay is better 
than the nuns here, and it is worse. The nuns will 
teach her to embroider, and to talk French, and to 
keep secrets, and to hide things. The people there 
will teach her to tell the truth, where she needs no 
teaching; to work, where she needs no teaching; 
to wash and to iron; to make succotash; and to rec¬ 
oncile the five points of Calvinism with one another 
and with infinite love. But this is to be considered: 
with the nuns she is close to us, and Squam Bay 
is very far off, particularly if there should be war.” 

“ Always war? ” asked Eunice anxiously. 

What troubled Eunice was that this conversation, 
having come to this point, never went any farther. 
Forty times had her brother come about as far as 
this; but forty times he had put off till next week 
any determination, and next week never came. The 
girl was too dear to him; her pretty ways were be¬ 
coming too necessary for him; Inez was too fond of 
her; and home-life, just thus and so, was too charm¬ 
ing. At any given moment he hated to break the 
spell, and to destroy all. 

This was, however, the last of these conferences. 
The next morning, immediately after family prayers, 
Silas Perry beckoned his sister into his own den. 

“ It is all settled,” he said half gayly, half dolefully. 

“ What is settled ? ” 

“ Ma-ry yonder, the savage, is to go to the Ursu- 
lines.” 

“Who settled that?” asked Eunice, supposing this 
was only the forty-first phase of the talk of which last 
night showed the fortieth. 



or, Show your Passports 349 

“ Who settled it ? Why, Ma-ry settled it. Who 
settles everything in this house? What is the old 
story ? It is repeated here. Ma-ry manages Ransom ; 
Ma-ry manages Inez; Ma-ry manages you. And 
you and Inez and Ransom manage me.” 

“ We and Roland,” said Eunice. 

“As you will. If Ma-ry does not manage him 
too, I am much mistaken. Anyway, the dear child 
has given her directions this time, with as quiet de¬ 
termination as if she had been yourself, and with 
as distinct eye down the future as if she had been 
Parson Forbes. She wants to go to the Ursulines, 
and to the Ursulines she is to go.” 

The Ursulines’ convent was at this moment the 
only school for girls, of any account, in Orleans, not 
to say in Louisiana. 

“ What did she say? ” 

“ She said that all the things she knew were things 
of the woods and the prairies and the rivers. She 
said Inez was kind, too kind; that you were kind, too 
kind; that everybody was kind. But she said that 
she was never to go back to the woods, never to 
live in them. She must learn to do what women 
did here. If she stayed in this house, I should spoil 
her. She did not put it in these words, but that was 
what she meant. If she went to the nuns, she should 
study all the time, and should never play. Here, she 
said, it was hard, very hard, not to play.” 

“What will Inez say?” 

“ I dare not guess. Ma-ry has gone to tell her.” 

“And - what will Roland say?” 

“ I do not know, nor do I know who will tell him.” 


35° 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER XXX 

MOTHER AND CHILD 

“ Smile not, my child, 

But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so beguiled 
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be 
So dreadful, since thou must divide it with me.” 

Shelley. 

So it was settled, and settled by herself, that poor 
Ma-ry should go into a convent school. The freest 
creature on earth was to be shut up in the most 
complicated system of surveillance. 

Ransom was well-nigh beside himself when he 
found that this step had been determined on, in face 
of his known views, and, indeed, without even the 
pretence of consultation with him. For the next 
day gloom was in all his movements. He would 
not bring Mr. Perry the claret that he liked, and 
pretended there was none left. He carried off the 
only pair of pumps which Roland could wear to the 
governors ball, and pretended they needed mending. 
Inez sent him for her hat; and he would not find 
it, and pretended he could not. For a day the 
family was made to understand that Ransom was 
deeply displeased. 

He made a moment for a conference with Ma-ry, 
as he strapped her trunk. The only consolation he 
had had was the selection of this trunk, at a little 
shop where they brought such things from France. 

“ Ma-ry,” said he, “ they ’ll want you to go on your 


or, Show your Passports 351 

knees before them painted eye-dolls. Don’t ye do it. 
They can’t make ye noway, and ye must n’t do it. 
Say ye prayers as Miss Eunice taught ye, and don’t 
say ’em to eye-dolls. They ’ll tell ye to lie and steal. 
Don’t ye do it. Let um lie as much as they want 
to; but don’t ye believe the fust word they tell ye. 
They won’t give ye nothin’ to eat but frogs, and not 
enough of them. Don’t ye mind. I’ll send round 
myself a basket twice a week. They won’t let me 
come myself, ’cause they won’t have no men near 
um but them black-coated priests, all beggars, all 
on um, and them others with brown nightgowns. Let 
them come; but I shall make old Chloe go round, 
or Salome, that’s the other one, twice a week with a 
basket, and sunthin’ good in it, and anough for three 
days. An’ you keep the basket, Ma-ry, and sponge 
it out, and give it back to her next time she comes. 
Don’t let them nuns get the baskets, ’cause they ain’t 
any more like um. They's white-oak baskets, made 
in a place up behind Atkinson; they ain’t but one 
man knows how to make um, an’ I make old Turner 
bring um down here to me. Don’t ye let the nuns 
get the baskets.” 

Ma-ry promised compliance with all his di¬ 
rections ; and the certainty of outwitting the “ eye- 
dollaters ” on the matter of her diet threw a little 
gleam of comfort over the old man’s sadness. 

She went to the Ursulines. The Ursulines re¬ 
ceived her with the greatest tenderness, and thought 
they never had a more obedient pupil. 

And this was the chief event in the family history 
of that winter. With the spring other changes came, 




352 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

necessitated by a removal to the plantation. Al¬ 
though this was by no means Silas Perry’s chief 
interest, he had great pride in it; and he did not 
choose to have it in the least behind the planta¬ 
tions of his Creole neighbors. Roland had brought 
from the polytechnic school some pet theories of 
science which he was eager to apply in the sugar- 
mills; and he did not find it difficult to persuade 
Lonsdale to join him, even for weeks at a time, 
when he went up the coast. A longer expedition, 
however, called them away, both from the counting- 
house and from the plantation. 

General Bowles had not forgotten his promise. 
Inez and Roland both twitted Aunt Eunice with 
her conquest over this handsome adventurer. It 
was in vain that Eunice said that he was well known 
to have one wife, and was even said to have many. 
All the more they insisted that no one knew but 
all these savage ladies might have been scalped 
in some internecine or Kilkennyish brawl, and that 
the general might be seeking a more pacific help¬ 
meet. The truth about General Bowles was that 
he was one of the wildest adventurers of any time. 
Born in Maryland, he had enlisted in King George’s 
army just after Germantown and Brandywine. He 
had been a prosperous chief of the Creeks. He 
had conferred, equal with equal, with the generals 
who had commanded him in the English army 
only a few years before. He had been an artist 
\ and an actor, in his checkered life; he had been 
in Spanish prisons, and had been presented at the 
English court. 



or. Show your Passports 353 

One day, when a very distinguished Indian em¬ 
bassy had brought in a letter from him to Eunice, 
Roland undertook to explain all this to Mr. Lonsdale. 

“ And now, Mr. Lonsdale,” said the impudent 
youngster Roland, who had chosen to give this 
account to him, as coolly as, on another occasion, 
he had cross-questioned him about the same man,— 
“ and now, Mr. Lonsdale, weary of diplomacy, he 
proposes to leave the throne of Creekdom. He 
lays his crown at Miss Perry’s feet; and she has 
only to say one little word, and he will become 
a sugar-planter of distinction on the C6te des Aca- 
diens, with Miss Perry as his helpmeet, to cure the 
diseases of his people, and with Mr. Roland Perry, 
ancien ettve de VEcole Poly technique, to direct the 
crystallization of his sugar.” 

The truth was, as it must be confessed, that the 
general’s letters had usually been made out of 
very slender capital. He would write to say that 
he was afraid his last letter had miscarried, or 
that he should like to know if Miss Ma-ry re¬ 
membered a house with a chimney at each end, 
whether she had ever seen a saw-mill, or the like. 
For a man who had nothing to say General Bowles 
certainly wrote to Miss Perry a great many letters 
that winter. But on this occasion Eunice was so 
much absorbed, as she read, that she did not give 
i the least attention to Roland’s raillery. 

“Hear this! hear this! Roland, go call your 
father. This really means something.” 

Mr. Perry came, on the summons, 

Eunice began; — 


23 








354 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


General Bowles to Miss Perry. 

Talladega, Creek Nation, April 19, 1802. 

My dear Miss Perry, — I can at last send you some 
tidings which mean something. If you knew the regret 
which I have felt in sending you so little news before, 
you would understand my pleasure now that I really believe 
I may be of some use to your charming protegee, 

“ Well begun,” said the irreverent Roland. “ We 
shall come to the sugar-plantation on the next page.” 

“Hold your tongue, sir,” said his father; and 
Eunice read on: — 

I have just returned from a “ talk,” so called, with some 
of the older chiefs of the Choctaw and Cherokee nations. 
So soon as I renewed the old confidence which these 
men always felt in me, I made my first inquiries as to 
raids from the west into the territories north of us, in 
the year 1785, or thereabouts. The Cherokee warriors 
knew nothing of our matter. 

But the Choctaw chiefs, fortunately, were better in¬ 
formed. As to the time there can be no question. It 
was the year 1784, well known to all these people from 
some eclipse or other which specially excited them. 

A party of Choctaw chiefs, embodying all that there are 
left of the once famous Natchez, who, as your brother tells 
us, have just now appeared in literature, — a party of Choc¬ 
taw chiefs crossed the Mississippi, and even the Red River, 
in quest of some lost horses. This means, I am sorry to 
say, that they went to take other horses to replace the lost 
ones. They met a large roving body of Apaches. They 
saw them, and they were whipped by them. They re¬ 
crossed the Mississippi much faster than they went over. 





or, Show your Passports 355 

These savages of the West had never, to my knowledge^ 
crossed the Father of Waters. But on this occasion, elated 
by their success, they did so; and then, fortunately for the 
Choctaw people, they forgot them. They were far north; 
and hearing of a little settlement from Carolina, low down 
on the Cumberland River, they pounced on it, and killed 
every fighting man. They burned every house, and stole 
every horse. Then the whites above them came down on 
them so fast that they retired as best they might. 

It is they, I am assured, who are the only Apaches 
who have crossed the Mississippi in this generation. It 
is they, as I believe, who seized your little friend and 
her mother. 

If you have any correspondents in the new State of 
Tennessee, they ought to be able to inform you further 
regarding the outpost thus destroyed. I cannot learn 
that it had any name; but it was very low on the 
Cumberland, and the time was certainly November, 1784. 

“ There is more ! there is more! ” screamed Ro¬ 
land, seeing that his aunt stopped. 

“ There is nothing more about Ma-ry,” said Eunice, 
who felt that she blushed, and was provoked beyond 
words that she did so. 

“ More ! more ! ” cried the bold boy, putting out 
his hand for the letter; but his aunt folded it, and 
put it in her pocket. 

And a warning word from his father, “ Roland, 
behave yourself,” told the young gentleman that 
for once he was going too far. 





356 Philip Nolan’s Friends: 


CHAPTER XXXI 

ON THE PLANTATION 

“ Those sacred mysteries, for the vulgar ear 
Unmeet; and known, most impious to declare, 

Oh ! let due reverence for the gods restrain 
Discourses rash, and check inquiries vain.” 

Homeric Hymns . 

Little enough chance of finding anything by raking 
over the wretched ashes of that village burned eigh¬ 
teen years before. Still every one would be glad to 
know that the last was known; and, if one aching 
heart could be spared one throb of agony, every 
one would be glad to spare it. 

The wonder and the satisfaction excited by Gen¬ 
eral Bowles’s letter held the little party in eager talk 
for five minutes; and then Mr. Lonsdale, who hap¬ 
pened to be of the plantation party that day, filled 
up the gap in the practical and definite way by 
which, more than once, that man of mystery had 
distinguished himself. 

“ I do not know what friends Mr. Perry may have, 
or what you may have, in Tennessee State,” said he, 
almost eagerly; “but I hope, I trust, Miss Perry, 
that you will put your commission of inquiry into 
my hands. I have loitered here in your dolce far 
niente of Louisiana much longer than I meant, as 
you know. What with this and that invitation, I 
have stayed and stayed in Capua, as if, indeed, 
here were the object of my life. But my measures 
were all taken last week. I asked Mr. Hutchings 



or, Show your Passports 357 

to select a padrone and boatmen for me; and he has 
hired a boat which, I am told, is just what it should 
be. Pardon me for saying ‘a boat: * I am told I 
must call it a venture. Your arrangements are fairly 
Venetian, Miss Perry. Men seem to know but one 
carriage.” 

“ Oh, call it a galliot! ” she said, “ and we shall 
know what you mean.” 

“ If you would only be Cleopatra,” said Mr. Lons¬ 
dale, with high gallantry, and he bowed. 

“ I shall be late in delivering my commissions at 
Fort Massac; but I shall be there before any one 
else leaving Orleans this spring. Pray let me make 
your inquiries regarding this dear child’s family.” 

Loyally said, and loyally planned, Mr. Lonsdale. 
If this man is a diplomatist, or whatever he be, he 
has twice come to the relief of Eunice by a most 
signal service, offered in the most simple and manly 
way. Even the suspicious Inez looked her grati¬ 
tude, through eyes that were filled with tears. 

The plan was too good not to be acceded to. 
Roland begged to go as a volunteer on the expedi¬ 
tion ; and Mr. Perry insisted on it that he must see 
to the stores. 

“ Pardon me, Mr. Lonsdale, but your countryman 
Mr. Hutchings does not know as we do what the 
Mississippi demands. I shall provision your galliot, 
or rather Ransom will; for, if I undertook to do 
it without his aid, he would countermand all my 
directions. I may as well from the first confess to 
him that I am at his mercy.” 

“ Take care, Mr. Perry, for I am almost as much a 


358 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

favorite with him as you are. That is, his pity for 
my ignorance, not to say his contempt for it, takes 
with me the place of his affection for your house. 
If you tell him to store the galliot for both of us, 
he will strip the plantation. ‘ Ain’t nothin’ fit to 
eat, all the way up river,’ he will say. ‘ All on ’em 
eats alligators and persimmons. Don’ know what 
good codfish and salt pork is, none on um.’ ” 

Everybody laughed. 

“ Capital, capital, Mr. Lonsdale ! You have studied 
the language of the country at its fountain.” 

“ We will not let Ransom starve us, Mr. Lonsdale; 
but certainly we will not let him starve you.” 

The reader of to-day, who embarks at New Orleans 
for the mouth of the Ohio in a steamboat which is 
“ a palace above and a warehouse below,” has to take 
thought, in order to make real to himself a voyage, 
when Lonsdale and Roland could not expect, even 
with extra good luck, to reach their destination in 
two months’ time. Slow as travelling was from Phila¬ 
delphia or Baltimore across the mountains, many a 
traveller would have taken a voyage from New Orleans 
to an Atlantic seaport, that he might descend the 
Ohio, rather than ascend the Mississippi. 

In this case, every preparation was made for com¬ 
fort and for speed, on a plan not very unlike that on 
which Inez and her aunt started on their journey for 
Texas. 

By a special dispensation, in which, perhaps, the 
vicar-general and bishop assisted, not to say the pope 
himself, Ma-ry was liberated from the convent school 
to be present at the last farewells. The evening was 


or, Show your Passports 359 

spent at the plantation with affected cheerfulness, as 
is men’s custom on the evenings of departure; and 
with early morning the two travellers were on their 
way. Mr. Perry took hi's own boat as they went up 
the river, and went down to the city to his counting- 
house, taking Ma-ry to a new sojourn with the 
Ursulines, in which her docility must show the pope 
that she had not abused his gracious permission for 
a “ retreat.” 

Eunice made her preparations for a quiet week 
with Inez. Dear little Inez! she was more lovely 
than ever, now that there was always a shade of care 
about her. How true it is that human life never can 
be tempered into the true violet steel without passing 
through the fire ! And Inez had passed through. It 
was the one bitter experience of life in which nobody 
could help her. Eunice knew that. She would have 
died for this child to save her sorrow; and yet with¬ 
out sorrow, nay, without bitter anguish, this lively, 
happy girl could never be made into a true woman. 
That Eunice knew also. And, while Inez suffered, 
all Eunice could do was to sit by, or stand by and 
look on, — to watch and to pray as she did that 
night by the camp-fire. 

“ Now we are rid of them all, aunty, we can go to 
work and get things into order. There is no end of 
things to be done, and you are to show me how to do 
them all. What in the world will come to the planta¬ 
tion when you go off to be Duchess of Clarence, or 
maybe queen of England, if I do not learn something 
this summer?” 

“ Could you not push the Duke of Clarence into a 


360 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

butt of malmsey, and be well rid of him? Then you 
would be free from your terrors. For me, I have not 
yet seen him, and I don’t know how I shall like him. 
Go, get your apron, and come with me.” 

And so the two girls, as Mr. Perry still called them 
fondly, had what women term a “ lovely time ” that 
day. No such true joy to the well-trained housekeep¬ 
ing chief, as to get rid of the men occasionally an 
hour or two early. Eunice and Inez resolved that 
they would have no regular dinner, just a cup of tea 
and a bit of cold meat; and that the day should be 
devoted to the inner mysteries of that mysterious 
Eleusinian profession which is the profession of the 
priestess of Ceres, or the domestic hearth. 

And a field-day they had of it. The infirmary was 
inspected, and the nursery, the clothing-rooms, the 
kitchen, and the storehouses. Inez filled her little 
head full, and her little note-book fuller. They were 
both in high conclave over some pieces of coarse 
home-woven cotonnades, — a famous manufacture of 
their Acadian neighbors, — when a scream was heard 
from the shore, and Mr. Perry was seen approaching. 

The ladies welcomed, him with eager wonder. He 
was tired and evidently annoyed, but relieved them 
in a minute from personal anxiety about Ma-ry or 
any near friend. 

“ Still my news is as bad as it can be. I have 
come back to send it up to Roland there and Mr. 
Lonsdale. This Morales, this idiot of an intendant, 
means to cut off from the people above the right of 
sending their goods to Orleans.” 

“ Cut off the right of depot! ” cried both the girls 


or, Show your Passports 361 

in a word. They both knew that the prosperity of 
Orleans and the prosperity of the West alike de¬ 
pended on it; nay, they knew that peace or war 
depended upon it. They heard with the amazement 
with which they would have heard that the intendant 
had fired the cathedral. 

“ Yes, the fool has cut off the permission for 
deposit. Of course I supposed it was a blunder. I 
went round to my lord’s office, and saw the idiot 
myself. He is as mad as a March hare. I reminded 
him of the treaty. The right is sure for three years 
more against all the intendants in the world. The crazy 
coot rolled his eyes, and said that in the high politics 
treaties even sometimes must give way. High fiddle¬ 
sticks ! I wish his Prince of Peace was higher than 
he has been yet, and with nothing to stand upon! ” 

“ Did you speak of the—the secret? ” said Eunice, 
meaning that Louisiana was really Napoleon’s prov¬ 
ince, or the French Republic’s, at this moment, and 
no province of Spain. 

“ I just hinted at it. So absurd that there should 
be this pretence of secrecy, when the ‘ secret ’ has 
been whispered in every paper in the land ! But, 
indeed, the men who are most angry below say that 
this is Bonaparte’s plan, that he wants to try the tem¬ 
per of the Kentuckians. He is no such fool. It is 
another piece of Salcedo’s madness, or of the mad¬ 
ness which ruled Salcedo’s. Perhaps they want at 
Madrid to steal all the value from their gift. Clearly 
enough there is a quarrel between old Salcedo the 
governor, and this ass of a Morales. The Intendant 
Morales will do it, or says he will do it all the same; 


362 Philip Nolan’s Friends , 

and the governor does not interfere. But it is all one 
business: it is that madness that sent Muzquiz after 
our poor friend; it is that madness which appointed 
Salcedo, the old fool, here. Madrid, indeed ! ” 

“ What will the river people say? ” asked Inez. 

“ I do not know what they ’ll say,” said her exas¬ 
perated father, who had by this time talked himself 
back into the same rage with which he had left the 
intendant’s apartments; “ but I know what they will 
do. They will take their rifles on their shoulders, 
and their powder-horns. They will put a few barrels 
of pork and hard-tack on John Adams’s boats, which 
are waiting handy for them up there. They will 
take the first rise on the river after they hear this 
news; and they will come down and smoke this 
whole tribe of drones out of this hive, and the in- 
tendant and the whole crew will be in Cuba in no 
time. Inez, mark what I say. This river and this 
town go together. The power that holds this town 
for an hour or a day against the wish of the people 
above holds it to its ruin. Remember that, if you 
live a hundred years.” 

“ The whole army of Cuba could be brought here 
in a very few weeks,” said Eunice, thoughtfully. 

“ Never you fear the army of Cuba. The general 
who ever brings an army from the Gulf against New 
Orleans, when the sharp-shooters of this valley want 
to hold New Orleans, comes here to his ruin. Inez, 
when New Orleans and the Western country shall 
learn to hold together, New Orleans wifi be one of 
the first cities of the world; and you, girl, are young 
enough to live to see it so.” 


or. Show your Passports 363 

All this he said, as Eunice fairly insisted on his 
drinking a cup of coffee and eating something after 
his voyage. All the time, however, the preparations 
were going forward, to order which he had himself 
come up the river. The lightest and swiftest boat in 
the little navy of the plantation was hastily got ready 
to be sent with the bad news to Roland and Lons¬ 
dale. Nobody knew whether the intendant had for¬ 
warded it. Nobody knew whether he meant to. But, 
since Oliver Pollock and Silas Perry forwarded gun¬ 
powder to Washington six and twenty years before, 
they knew the way to send news up the river when 
they chose, and he did not choose that any intendant 
of them all should be ahead of him. 

The boat was ready before half an hour was over. 
The occasion was so pressing that Ransom himself 
was put in charge of the expedition and the de¬ 
spatches. The other party had a day the start of 
them. But Ransom took a double crew that he 
might row all night, and hoped to overhaul them at 
their camp of the second evening. 

CHAPTER XXXII 

THE DESOLATE HOME 

“ Still, as they travel, far and wide, 

Catch they and keep they a trace here, a trace there, 

That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there.” 

Browning. 

RANSOM returned a good deal earlier than anybody 
expected. He came in the middle of the night with 
as cross a crew of boatmen as ever rowed any Jason 


364 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

or Odysseus. He had compelled them to such labors 
as they did not in the least believe in. 

He reported to Eunice before breakfast. 

“ So you caught them, Ransom? ” 

“ Yes, ’m. Come up with um little this side Pointe 
Coupee. They was in camp. Good camp too. All 
right and comfortable. Mr. Roland understands 
things, mum.” 

“ And you did n’t see the Spaniards? ” 

“Yes, ’m — see um. Didn’t see me though — 
darned fools. See them fust night out. They was 
all asleep in the Green Reach. See they fires, lazy 
dogs! didn’t go nigh um, ’n’ they didn’t know 
nothin’ about us; passed right by um, t’ other side 
of the river. That’s all they’s fit for. Calls um 
coast-guards. Much as ever they can do is to keep 
they own hats on.” 

“And what message did the gentlemen send? ” 

“ Said they was all well, and had had very good 
luck; ’n’ they wrote two letters — three letters here, 
for you and Miss Inez ’n’ Mr. Perry. I’d better take 
his’n down to him myself. I’m goin’ down to¬ 
day.” 

“ And did you come back in one day, Ransom?” 

“Yes,’m. Come down on the current. Come in 
no time, ef these lazy niggers knew how to row. 
Don’t know nothin’. Ought to ’a’ been here at three 
o’clock. Didn’t git here till midnight. Told um 
I’d get out V walk, but ye can’t shame um nor 
nothin’. They can’t row. They don’t know nothin’.” 

This was Ransom’s modest account of a feat un¬ 
surpassed on the river for ten years — indeed, till the 


or, Show your Passports 365 

achievements of steam left such feats for the future 
unrecorded. 

“ And you saw no one coming down? ” 

“ Yes, ’m. See them Spanish beggars ag’in, and 
this time they stopped me. Couldn’t ’a’ stopped me 
ef I did n’t choose; but there’s no use quarrelling. 
They was gittin’ ready for the siesta, ’s they calls 
it, lazy dogs! right this side o’ Mr. Le Bourgeois’s 
place, — pootiest place on the river. We was on 
t’ other side, and they seed us, and fired a shot in 
the air; and I told the niggers to stop rowin’. Made 
the Spanishers — them’s the coast-guard, they calls 
um — come out and meet us. They asked where 
we’d been. I told um we’d been cat-fishing. They 
asked where the fish was. I said we had n’t had no 
luck. They asked if any boats had passed me, and 
I said they had n’t, ’cause they had n’t They asked 
me to take a note down to the intendant, ’11’ I said I 
would; ’n’ I got it here. Guess I shall give it to him 
about Thanksgivin’ time.” 

This, with a grim smile of contempt for the snares 
and wiles of the Spanishers. 

“ O Ransom! you had better take it to the inten- 
dant’s to-day.” 

“I’ll see, mum. Sartin it’s for no good,’cause 
they’s no good in um. They’s all thieves ’n’ liars. 
Mebbe it’s for harm, ’n’ ef it is, they’d better not 
have it.” 

“Well, show it to Mr. Perry, Ransom, anyway.” 

To which the old man made no reply, but with¬ 
drew; and then the ladies undertook the business of 
letter-reading and breakfasting together. The letters 


366 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

would not tell many facts. They might show to the 
skilful reader something of what was in the heart of 
each writer, as he left for such long and solitary 
journey. But this story hurries to its end, and these 
intimations of feeling must be left to the reader’s 
conjectures. 

Whatever they said, the ladies had to satisfy them¬ 
selves with these letters for months. The news which 
Lonsdale and Roland carried was enough to turn 
back most of the downward-bound boats which would 
else have taken their letters. Such boats as did 
attempt the gauntlet were seized or threatened at the 
different Spanish posts; were searched, perhaps, by 
guarda costas , so called; and nothing so suspicious 
as letters, even were these the most tender-looking 
of billets to the sweetest of ladies, was permitted to 
slip through. 

It is true that some cause, either the bitter protests 
of the American factors, or some doubts engendered 
by despatches from home, postponed until October 
the final proclamation of the famous interdict by 
which New Orleans was self-starved and self-besieged. 
Its effect on the upper country was none the less for 
the delay. 

The ladies settled back into that simple and not 
unprofitable life so well known to our grandmothers, 
so impossible to describe to their descendants, or 
even for these descendants to conceive, — a life un¬ 
persecuted by telegrams, by letters, by express- 
parcels; a life which knew nothing of that “stand 
and deliver,” which bids us reply by return of post; 
or, while the telegraph-messenger waits in the hall, 


Or, Show your Passports 367 

to give a decision on which may rest the happiness 
of a life, Por Eunice and Inez, the great events were, 
perhaps, to see that a crew of Caddoes drifting down 
the river with their baskets were properly welcomed; 
perhaps to spend the day with Madame Porcher, at 
her plantation just below; perhaps to prepare for 
the return visit when the time came; perhaps to go 
out of a Saturday evening to see the Acadians dance 
themselves almost dead to the violin-music of Michael, 
the old white-haired fiddler; perhaps for Inez to keep 
her little school daily, in which she taught the little 
black folk the mysteries of letters; and all the time, 
certainly, for both of them, the purely domestic cares 
of that independent principality which was called a 
plantation. 

Mr. Perry came up to the plantation about once a 
week, but only for a day or two at a time. His stay 
would be shorter than Eunice had ever known it, and 
there was anxiety in his manner which it had never 
known before. Everything combined to make that 
an anxious year for Orleans. Though this ridiculous 
intendant had pretended not to know the secret of 
its transfer to France, many men did know that secret 
early in the spring, and before summer all men knew it. 
That General Victor with an army of twenty-five 
thousand F'renchmen was on his way to take posses¬ 
sion, was a rumor which came with almost every 
vessel from Philadelphia or from England. General 
Victor and his army did not appear. What did ap¬ 
pear was another army, a starving army of poor 
French men and women from San Domingo, driven 
out by a new wave of the insurrection there. It was 


368 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

not the first of such arrivals. They always made 
care and anxiety for the little colony. Not only were 
the poor people to be provided for, but the cause of 
their coming had to be talked over in every family 
in Louisiana. A successful rising of slaves in San 
Domingo had to be discussed in the hearing and 
presence of slaves now well enough satisfied in Louisi¬ 
ana. This year, this anxiety had reached its height. 
The Spanish intendant, who had precipitated war on 
his own head from up the river, so soon as the West¬ 
ern sharp-shooters could arrive, frightened himself 
and his people to death with terrors about insurrec¬ 
tion within. The French began to whisper that their 
own countrymen were coming. The handful of 
Americans chafed under the unrighteous restriction 
on the trade for which they lived there. 

“ By the King. 

A proclamation! 

In the name of the King! 

Know all men: 

That His Most Christian Majesty commands that the sale of 
all clocks bearing upon them the figure of a woman, whether 
sitting or standing, wearing the cap of Liberty, or bearing a 
banner in her hand, is henceforth, forever, absolutely prohibited 
in the colony of Louisiana. 

Let all faithful subjects of his Majesty govern themselves 
accordingly. 

Long live the King.” 

To see such a proclamation printed in the miser¬ 
able “ Gazette,” or posted at the corner of the street, 
was something to laugh at; and at the old jealousies 
of other days, between the French circle and the 
Spanish circle, Mr. Perry could afford to laugh again. 


or, Show your Passports 369 

But here, in matters much more important, was 
jealousy amounting to hatred, for causes many of 
which were real; and every man’s hand, indeed, 
seemed to be against his brother. 

It was therefore, at best, but a sad summer and 
autumn; and Miss Perry succeeded in persuading 
her brother to remove the little family to the city 
earlier than was their custom, that he might at least 
have in town what she called home comforts, and 
that, if anything did happen, they might at least be 
all together. 

“ We cannot be of much use,” she said; “ but at 
least we shall be of no harm. Besides, if we go, we 
shall take Ransom: I know he will be a convenience 
to you, and you may need him of a sudden.” 

Whether Ransom would be of any real service, Mr. 
Perry doubted. But it was very true that he was 
glad to have his cheerful little family together; and 
in the comfort of a quiet evening to forget the 
intrigues, the plots, the alarms, and the absurd 
speculations which were discussed every day in his 
counting-room, now that there was little other busi¬ 
ness done there. In the old palmy days of Governor 
Miro, even under the later dynasties of Casa Calvo 
and Gayoso, if any such complications threatened as 
now impended, Mr. Perry would have been among 
the favored counsellors of the viceroy; for viceroys 
these governors were. He would not have hesitated 
himself to call, and to offer advice which he knew 
would be well received. But times were changed, 
indeed. Instead of one king, there were three. Here 
was Morales, the intendant, pretending that he did 
24 


370 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

not care whether Governor Salcedo approved or did 
not approve of his doings. Here was Salcedo him¬ 
self: was he old enough to be foolish and in his 
dotage, as some people thought? or was he pretend¬ 
ing to be a fool, and really pulling all the strings be¬ 
hind the curtain? And here was young Salcedo, his 
son, puffing about, and pretending to manage every¬ 
body and everything. 

One night, at a public ball, this young Salcedo set 
everybody by the ears. The men drew swords, and 
the women fainted. Just as the dance was to begin, 
and the band began playing a French contra-dance, 
the young braggart cried out, “ English dances, 
English dances ! ” He was a governor’s son : should 
he not rule the ballroom? Anyway, the band-mas¬ 
ter feared and obeyed, and began on English contra- 
dances. The young French gallants would not stand 
this, and cried out, “French, French, French!” 
There were not Spaniards enough to outcry them; 
but Salcedo, and those there were, drew their swords. 
The Frenchmen drew theirs. The women screamed. 
The American and English gentlemen let the others 
do the fighting, while they carried the fainting women 
out. The captain of the guard marched in with a file 
of soldiers, presented bayonets, and proceeded to 
clear the hall. It was only this absurd extreme 
which brought people to terms. The women were 
revived, and the dancing went on. What with young 
Salcedo’s folly, old Salcedo’s jealousy, and Morales’s 
wrong-headedness, some such bad-blooded quarrel 
filled people’s ears every day. 

Under such circumstances, the simple life of the 



Or, Show your Passports 371 

city had all gone. Mr. Perry’s counsels, once always 
respected at headquarters, were worthless now. 

This intendant knew his estimate among the Amer¬ 
icans, and with their nation, only too well; but he 
pretended to make that a reason for distrusting him. 
The absurd dread of the Americans, which first 
showed itself in the treachery to poor Philip Nolan, 
showed itself now in unwillingness to hear what even 
the most cautious Americans had to say. 

In the midst of such anxieties, as they expected 
Roland from hour to hour, there came in his place, 
by the way of Natchez, only this not very satisfactory 
letter: — 

Roland Perry to Eunice Perry. 

Fort Massac, Aug. 31, 1802. 

My dear Aunt, — We have been up the Cumberland 
River; and I am convinced that I have seen the ruins of 
dear Ma-ry’s home. There is not stick nor stem standing 
of the village, — save some wretched charred beams of the 
saw-mill, all covered with burrs and briars and bushes. 
But that this is the place, you may be sure. We have been 
up to the next settlement, which was planted only three 
years later; and they know the whole sad story, just as 
Gen. Bowles has told you. The bloody brutes came in on 
the sleeping village, just in the dead of night. The people 
had hardly a chance to fire a shot, none to rally in their 
defence. They slaughtered all the men, and, as these 
people said, they slaughtered all the women; but it seems 
dear Ma-ry and her mother were saved. 

Which baby she is, from which mother of these eight or 
ten families, of course I cannot tell, nor can these people. 
But they say that, at Natchez, there is an old lady who can. 


372 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

An old Mrs. Willson, — all these people were Scotch-Irish 
from Carolina, — an old Mrs. Willson came on to join her 
daughter, and arrived the spring after the massacre. Poor 
old soul, she had no money to go back. She has loitered 
and loitered here, till only two years ago. Then she said 
there would be more chance of her hearing news of her 
child if she went farther south and west; and so when 
somebody moved to Natchez he took with him this Mother 
Ann; and, if she is alive, she is there still. 

She is possibly our Ma-ry’s grandmother. If anybody 
knows anything of the dear child’s birth, it is she. 

And this is all I can tell. I am sorry it is so little; so is 
poor Lonsdale, — the heartiest, most loyal companion, as 
he is the most accomplished gentleman, it was ever a young 
fellow’s luck to travel with. You will think this is very 
little; but it has cost us weeks of false starts and lost clews 
to get at what I send you. 

You will not wonder that you do not see me. You will 
believe me that I am well employed. Make much love for 
me to dear Ma-ry and to my darling Een. 

Always your own boy, 

Roland Perry. 

This letter had been a strangely long time coming. 
Had it perhaps been held by the Spanish authorities 
somewhere? Eunice had another letter, a letter in 
Lonsdale’s handwriting; but she read Roland’s first, 
and then, grieved and surprised that her boy was not 
coming, she gave it to his father. 

Mr. Perry read with equal surprise and with equal 
grief. 

“ What does it mean?” said she. 

“It means,” said he, after a pause, — “it means 





or. Show your Passports 373 

that he thought the chances were that the coast-guard 
would get that letter, and so it must tell very little.” 
Then, after another pause, “Eunice, I am afraid it 
means that the boy has mixed himself up with re¬ 
cruiting the Kentuckians to come down here on the 
next rise of the river. Why they did not come on 
the last rise, is a wonder to me; but I suppose they 
were waiting for these fools to strike the last blow. 
They have struck it now. As I told you, Morales 
has published his ‘ interdict.’ The old fool Salcedo 
pretends to shake his head; but it is published all 
the same, and, now they have done it, they shake at 
every wind. They believe, at the Government House, 
that twenty thousand armed men, mounted on horses 
or alligators or both, are now on their way. The 
intendant shakes in his shoes, as he walks from mass 
to his office. Roland has been bred a soldier. He 
is an eager American. He certainly has not stayed 
for nothing, when his heart and everything else calls 
him here. What does your Mr. Lonsdale say? ” 

Mr. Lonsdale said very little that could be read 
aloud, as it proved. In briefer language than Roland’s 
he told substantially the same story. Mother Ann, 
at Natchez, — if Mother Ann still lived, — was the 
person to be consulted regarding Ma-ry’s lineage. 

There seemed to be more in Mr. Lonsdale’s letter 
than was read aloud to Mr. Perry, or even to Inez. 
But poor Inez was growing used to secrets and to 
mysteries. Poor girl! she knew that of one thing she 
never spoke to Aunt Eunice. Who was she, to make 
Aunt Eunice tell everything to her? It seemed to 
her that the world was growing mysterious. Her 


374 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

lover left her, if he were her lover, and never said a 
word to tell her he loved her; and no man knew 
where his body lay. Her dear Ma-ry, her other self, 
was caged up on the other side of those hateful bars. 
Her own darling brother, lost so long, and only just 
back again, —he had disappeared too. Nothing but 
these letters, months old, to tell what had become of 
him. And now, when Aunt Eunice had a letter from 
where he was, that letter was not read to Inez, as 
once every letter was: it was simply put away after 
one miserable scrap had been read aloud, and people 
began discussing the situation as if this letter had 
never come. 

But the letters were to work Inez more woe than 
this; for Eunice determined to follow up, as soon as 
might be, the clew they gave. 

So was it, that some weeks after, when a change 
was to be made in the Spanish garrison at Concordia, 
opposite Natchez, she availed herself of the escort of 
a friendly officer going up the river, who was taking 
his wife with him, and determined for herself to make 
an inquiry at that village for “ Mother Ann.” She 
had never ceased to feel that on her, first of all, rested 
the responsibility in determining Ma-ry’s future, and 
in unravelling the history of her past. 


or, Show your Passports 


375 


CHAPTER XXXIII 
ALONE 

“ Much was in little writ, and all conveyed 
With cautious care, for fear to be betrayed 
By some false confidant, or favorite maid.” 

Dryden. 

“Ah, well!” wrote Inez, in the queer little journal 
which she tried to keep in those days, “ so I am to 
learn what life is. They take their turns; but one 
after another of these I love most leaves me, till I am 
now almost alone. I will try not to be ungrateful, 
but I am very lonely.” 

And here the poor girl stopped; and such was the 
eventfulness of her life for weeks after, that she does 
not come to the diary again. As it is apt to happen 
in our somewhat limited human life, the people who 
have most to do have little chance, or little spirit, to 
sit down night by night, to tell on paper how they 
did it. 

Her aunt’s absence must of necessity be three or 
four weeks in length. They parted with tears, you 
may be sure. It was the first time they had been 
parted, for so long a separation, since Inez could re¬ 
member. She was now indeed put to the test to 
show how well she could carry on the duties of the 
head of the household. 

And Chloe and Antoine, and even old Ransom, 
would come to her for orders, in the most respectful 
way, from day to day. “ As if I did not know,” Inez 




376 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

said to Ma-ry, in one of their convent interviews, 
“ that they were all going to do just what they 
thought best, and as if they did not know that I 
knew it.” 

Once a fortnight, under the rules for girls’ schools, 
which St. Ursula had arranged before the barba¬ 
rians had cut off her head at Cologne, Inez was 
permitted to visit Ma-ry for an hour in the convent 
parlor. Once a month, under some such dispensation 
from the holy father at Rome as has been spoken of, 
Ma-ry was able to return the visit for the better part 
of a day. For the rest, their intercourse went on in 
correspondence, with the restriction, not pleasing to 
two such young ladies, that the letters on both sides 
were to be examined before they reached their desti¬ 
nation by Sister Barbara. Inez took such comfort 
as she could, by going to mass on Sunday at the 
chapel of St. Ursula, where she could see Ma-ry, and 
Ma-ry could see her. But, excepting these comforts, 
the two girls had to live on in hope that Whit- 
Sunday would come at last, and then Ma-ry was to 
be liberated from the study and the imprisonment 
to which she had so bravely submitted. 

Poor Inez’s anxieties were not to be the questions 
of good or bad coffee, or tender steaks or tough. 
Everything seemed to conspire against the peace of 
that little community; and in that little community 
the bolts seemed to fall hottest and fastest on the 
household of Silas Perry. 

The community itself was in the most feverish con¬ 
dition. Monsieur Laussat had arrived, with a com¬ 
mission from the First Consul to govern the colony, 



or, Show your Passports 377 

as soon as it was transferred by Spain; for all mys¬ 
tery about the transfer from Spain to France was 
now over. Besides old Salcedo, “ moribund,” and 
young Salcedo, impudent and interfering, and the 
Intendant Morales, idiotic and pig-headed, here was 
this pretentious popinjay, Laussat. 

You would have said that the French people 
would have been pleased: now they could dance 
French contra-dances when they chose. 

Not so much pleased. The Spanish rule had been 
very mild. Hardly a tax, hardly any interference, 
before this fool came in. Oh for the old days of 
Miro, and then we would not ask for any French 
ruler! 

And Monsieur Laussat, or Citizen Laussat, without 
a soldier to walk behind him or before him, with 
nothing but a uniform and a few clerks, is swelling 
and puffing, and talking of what our army is going 
to do. 

But where is “ our army”? 

It does not come. 

Governor Salcedo invites him to dinner, and is 
civil. Young Salcedo makes faces behind his back, 
and is rude. Meanwhile the bishop is cross with the 
Free-Masons, and says the Jacobins are coming; 
and all the timid people are watching the negroes, 
and say Christophe or Dessalines is coming. Men 
who never sat up all night, except at a revel, are 
watching their own kitchens for fear of secret 
meetings. 

“ Ah me ! ” poor Inez says, “ were there ever such 
hateful times? When will Roland come? When will 


37 $ Philip Noland Friends; 

Aunt Eunice come? When can I go back to the 
plantation ? ” 

One afternoon Mr. Perry came home later than 
usual, and looked even more troubled than usual. 
He changed his coat, and made ready for dinner, 
apologized to Inez for making her dinner late, and 
then bade the servant call Ransom. 

“ I do not think he is in, papa. He has not come 
home since I sent him down to you.” 

“ Why, that,” said her father, “ was but little after 
noon. He came, and I gave him his papers for the 
‘ Hannah.’ The ‘ Hannah ’ cast loose, and was gone 
in twenty minutes. Tarbottle stood on the quarter, 
and waved his hat to me, as they drifted by the 
office. Where can the old fellow have gone?” 

These were the first words, remembered for days 
afterward, about a mysterious disappearance of the 
good old man. 4 One more of Inez’s stand-bys out of 
the way. 

For that afternoon Mr. Perry gave himself no 
care. So often was Ransom out of the way that 
there was an open jest jn the family, which pretended 
that he was major-domo in another household, and 
spent half of his time in it. Mr. Perry needed him 
this evening; but he often needed him when he had 
to do without him. He merely directed that word 
should be brought to him of Ransom’s return, and 
made no inquiry. 

But when it appeared, the next morning, that 
Ransom had not slept at home, matters looked more 
serious. A theory was started that he had gone 
down the river with the “ Hannah,” to return with 


or, Show your Passports 379 

the river-pilot; but an express to the vessel, which 
was making but stow progress, settled that idea. A 
message up to the plantation showed that he was not 
there. A note from Captain Tarbottle made sure 
that the old fellow had landed safely from the brig; 
but from that moment not a word could be heard of 
poor Ransom. 

Mr. Perry’s anxiety was much greater than he 
could describe to Inez. The girl was so much 
attached to her old protector that his death would be 
to her a terrible calamity. To Inez, therefore, Mr. 
Perry affected much more confidence than he felt. 
The truth was, that if the old man had not carried 
much such a charmed life as crazy men carry in 
Islam, he would have been put out of the way long 
before. In this mixed chaotic population of French, 
Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Sicilians, English, Irish, 
negroes, and Indians, Ransom was going and coming, 
announcing from moment to moment, to men’s faces, 
that they were all thieves and liars and worse. How 
he had escaped without a thousand hand-to-hand 
battles was and had been a mystery to Silas Perry. 
Now that Ransom was gone, his own conviction was 
simply that the hour had come, which had been post¬ 
poned as by a miracle. After three days of inquiry, 
he was certain that he should never see Ransom 
again. The blow of a dirk, and a plash into the 
river, would make little echo; and the Mississippi 
tells no tales. 

No one said this to poor Inez; but poor Inez was 
not such a fool but she suspected it. She did not 
like to tell her father how much shq suspected, and 



380 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

how much she feared. She did write to her aunt; 
and she poured out her fears, without hesitation, to 
Ma-ry. If Sister Barbara or Sister Horrida wanted 
to read this, they were welcome. 

Weary with such anxieties, the poor girl sat waiting 
for her father one evening, even later than on the day 
when Ransom disappeared. At last she called An¬ 
toine to know if his master had spoken of a late 
dinner. “ No, monsieur had said nothing.” Then 
Antoine might make ready to walk with her to the 
counting-room; and Antoine might take a bottle of 
claret with him: perhaps her father was not well. 

The sun had fairly set. The twilight is very short; 
and even at that hour the street, never much fre¬ 
quented, was still. The girl almost flew over the 
ground in her eagerness. But the counting-room 
was wholly locked up; no one was there. Indeed, 
no one was in the neighborhood. 

Papa must have stopped at Mr. Huling’s. They 
would walk round that way; and they did so. With 
as clear a voice as she could command, and with well- 
acted indifference, she called across the yard to Mr. 
Huling, who was smoking in his gallery, and who ran 
to her as soon as he recognized her voice. 

No. As it happened, he had not seen Mr. Perry 
all day. He expected him, but Mr. Perry had not 
come round. He had thought he might have gone 
up the river. Had Miss Perry any news of old 
Ransom? 

Mr. Huling was the American vice-consul, and 
Inez was half tempted to open her whole budget of 
terrors to him. But she knew this would displease 



or. Show your Passports 381 

her father. Indeed, he was probably at home by this 
time, waiting for her. She said as much to her 
friend, left a message for the ladies, and withdrew. 
So soon as she had passed the garden she fairly ran 
home. 

No father there! 

A message to the book-keeper brought him round 
to wonder but to suggest nothing. Mr. Perry had 
left the counting-room rather earlier than usual, had 
walked down the river-bank: that was all any one 
had observed. The old man was not a person of 
resource, and could only express sympathy. 

And so poor Inez was left indeed alone. What a 
night that was to her! How it recalled the horrible 
night on the Little Brassos! Only then it was she 
who had drifted away from the rest of them : now she 
was the fixture, and everybody — everybody she 
loved — had drifted away from her. One by one, 
they had all gone. Nobody to talk to, nobody to 
consult, nobody even to cry with. Ma-ry gone, 
Roland gone, her aunt gone, poor old Ransom gone, 
and now papa gone! Vainly she tried to persuade 
herself that she was a fool; that papa was at Daniel 
Clark’s card-party, or had stopped for a cup of tea 
with the Joneses. But really she knew that papa did 
not do such things without dressing, and without 
sending word home. Papa would never frighten her 
so. She tried to imagine sudden exigencies on ship¬ 
board which might have called him down the river for 
the night. This was a little more hopeful. But she 
did not in her heart believe this, and she knew she 
did not. The girl was too much her father’s confi- 




382 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

dante, he talked with, her quite too freely and wisely 
about his affairs, for her to pretend to take this com¬ 
fort solidly. 

She went through the form of ordering in the 
dinner, and ordering it out again. She wrapped her 
shawl around her, and sat on the gallery, to catch the 
first footstep. Footstep ! No footsteps in that street 
after nine at night! She watched the stars, and saw 
them pass down behind the magnolias. When Fo- 
malhaut was fairly out of sight, she would give it up 
and go to bed. As if she could sleep to-night! 

And yet, poor tired child, she did sleep; she slept 
then and there. And she dreamed. What did she 
dream of ? Ah me ! What did poor Inez dream of 
most often? She was sitting in the gallery. Her 
shawl was round her head, as she dreamed; and 
there was a quick footstep in the street. Then some 
one stopped, and knocked hard at the street-gate. 
And then, as she sat, she could see a head above the 
gate, — a head without a hat on. And the head 
spoke in the darkness; it cried loud: “Ransom, 
Ransom! Caesar, Caesar ! Miss Eunice, Miss Eunice! 
Miss Inez, Miss Inez! ” 

It was the head of William Harrod, and it was 
William Harrod’s voice which called. 

Inez was well waked now. With one hand she 
seized the hall-bell, and rang it loud to call Antoine. 
She dashed down the steps, not waiting an instant, 
nor seeing the winding garden-path. She rushed 
across the circular grass-plat, and through- the shrub¬ 
bery to the gate. She unbolted the gate, flung it 
back, and threw it open. But there was no one 



or. Show your Passports 


3 8 3 


there! Inez thought she heard receding steps in the 
darkness; but, if so, it was but an instant. By the 
time Antoine was by her side, all was midnight 
silence. 

The girl compelled the frightened Antoine to run 
with her to the corner of the street. But all was still 
as death in the cross-street to which she led him. 
And she was obliged to return to the house, wonder¬ 
ing, had she been asleep, and had she dreamed? 
Could dreams be as life-like as this was? Inez con¬ 
fessed to herself that she had dreamed of William 
Harrod before; but never had she seen his face or 
heard his voice in a dream which had such reality as 
this. 

It will not do to say that she passed a sleepless 
night. There are few sleepless nights to girls of her 
age and health. But the sleep was broken by 
dreams, and they were always dreams of horror. 
All alone she was indeed; and such was their life in 
Orleans, that there were strangely few people to 
whom the girl could turn for counsel. 

So soon as she thought it would answer in the 
i morning, she went out herself to see Mr. Huling, 
resolved to intrust all her agonies to him, as she 
should have done at the first, she now thought. Alas ! 
at sunrise, Mr. Huling had gone down the river, on an 
errand at the Balize, which would detain him many 
days. There was only a consul’s clerk, a stranger, 
clearly inefficient, though willing enough, with whom 
Inez could confide. She did intrust him with her 
: story, but she did not make him feel its importance. 
He promised her, however, to call on Mr. Daniel 




384 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Clark or Mr. Jones, and on young Mr. Bingaman, 
and to be governed by their advice. He undertook 
to persuade her that she was unduly alarmed. Her 
father was visiting some friend. He would be back 
before the day was over. For such is the way in 
which ignorant and inefficient men usually treat 
women. 

Inez had more success in rousing the interest and 
sympathy of Mr. Pollock, one of her father’s com¬ 
panions and friends. But even he, interested as he 
was, did not want to alarm the city vainly. Nor did 
Inez want to. He sent an express to the plantation, 
and lost half a day so, in justifying Inez in her cer¬ 
tainty that her father was not there. And in such 
useless fritter, which she knew was useless, the day 
was wasted, before he brought the consul’s clerk to 
an understanding of who Silas Perry was, and that 
some inquiry as to his welfare was incumbent on the 
Americans in Orleans, and on those who represented 
them. 

A horrible day to Inez. She was becoming a 
woman very fast now. 

Just before dark, when her loneliness seemed the 
most bitter; when she had done everything she 
could think of doing, had turned every stone, and 
felt that she had utterly failed, that she had as little 
resource as poor old Monsieur Desbigny the book¬ 
keeper had, — she heard an unexpected sound ; and 
one of the little Chihuahua dogs which the girls had 
brought with them from Antonio — the token of Mr. 
Lonsdale’s attention — jumped upon her lap. 

“ 0ne bein g that has not left me, that tries to find 



or, Show your Passports 385 


guilty 


■z 


me.” This was Inez’s first thought, as she fondled 
the little creature; and there was a sort of 
thought mingled with it, that she 
had never been specially attentive 
to her pet. He was a pretty crea¬ 
ture, but he was Mr. Lonsdale’s 
present. Ma-ry had been much 
more attentive to hers; but Inez 
had willingly enough left her dog 
to a little black boy at the plan¬ 
tation. And now this little for¬ 
saken wretch, grateful for such scant 
favors as Inez had bestowed, had 
followed her down the river. How 
did he get here to be her companion 
when she had no other? 

Are you sure of that, Inez? 

As she bent over the little wretch 
to fondle him, she felt a real sinking 
of heart at finding that it was not 
Skip, after all, but Trip. Now, 

Trip was Ma-ry’s dog, and not hers. 

Trip had escaped from convent fare 
to the more luxurious home he was 
first used to. Inez was so angry 
that she took him in both hands to 
push him from her lap, — when her 
hand closed on a little bit of paper 
wound tightly round his back leg, 
so colored with charcoal as to match 
the hairless skin precisely. 

In an instant Inez had clipped 
25 























386 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

the thread which bound it, and took the scrap to the 
light. 

As it unrolled, it was a strip of paper several inches 
long, very narrow. Not one word of writing on it! 
Ma-ry had not meant to risk any secrets. But in 
dingy red characters, — Inez knew only too well where 
that red came from, — in the Indian hieroglyphic 
with which she and Ma-ry had whiled away so 
many rainy days, was a legend which answered, 
oh, so many questions! 

There was the sign of Ransom, an eye strangely 
cocked up to heaven ; the sign or token of Mr. Perry, 
two feathers, cut in the shape to which the old- 
fashioned penmen always trimmed their goose-quills. 
Around these signs was a twisted rope, doubly 
wreathed. And Inez knew that this meant that both 
Mr. Perry and Ransom were in prison. But this was 
not all, but only the beginning. In long series, there 
was the rising sun; there was the roof of a house; 
there was a hawk, a tree; strange devices defying all 
perspective and all rules of design. But Inez knew 
their meaning, and wrought out the sequence from 
the beginning. The legend directed her to take, with 
her brother’s field-glass, a little before the sun rose 
the next morning, some station from which she could 
see the top of the Ursuline convent. Ma-ry could 
tell her by the pantomime of the Indian race what 
she dared not commit to paper, for fear some adept 
in the Indian hieroglyphic might catch poor Trip as 
he worked his way from the convent garden. 

Of all the wonders which Roland had brought home 
from Paris, nothing had delighted Ma-ry so much as 


or, Show your Passports 


3 8 7 


this field-glass, which he had selected from the work¬ 
shop of the Lerebours of the day. Often had she 
expatiated to him and to Inez together, on the 
advantages of this instrument to people who were 
surrounded with enemies. More than once had Inez, 
and once in particular, as she now remembered, had 
her aunt, tried to explain to Ma-ry that as most peo¬ 
ple lived they were not surrounded with enemies, and 
that the uses of the field-glass were, in fact, pacific. 
But this girl had grown up with the habit of question¬ 
ing every rustling leaf. She had not been persuaded 
out of her theory. All this talk Inez remembered 
to-night, as she wiped the lenses of the field-glass, 
and as she reconnoitred the garden to make sure 
which magnolia-tree best commanded the roof of the 
Ursulines’ convent. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 

ALL WILL BE WELL 

“ Short exhortations need.” — Neptune in Ovid. 

Before it was light, — long before the time Ma-ry 
had indicated in her blood-red letter, — Inez was 
• working her way up the tall magnolia which stood 
south of the house. She had taken a garden-ladder 
to the lower branches, and now scrambled up without 
much more difficulty than the lizards which she 
startled as she did so. How often in little-girl days 
had she climbed this very tree, Ransom approving 
and directing! And how well she remembered the 
i * last victorious ascent for a white bud that seemed to 
defy all assault; and then, alas ! the prohibition which 



388 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

had crowned victory, and robbed it of all its 
laurels, as her aunt and even her father had joined 
against her, and bidden her never climb the tree 
again! 

Ah me ! if only either of them were here, she would 
not disobey them now! How wretched to be her 
own mistress! 

The field-glass was swung around her neck by its 
strap; and the girl brought in her hand the end of a 
long narrow pennon of white cotton cloth. When 
she had attained a station which wholly commanded 
the roof of St. Ursula’s shrine, Inez pulled up by the 
pennon a fishing-rod which she had attached to it, — 
one of the long canes from the brake which are the 
joy of the Louisiana anglers, — and thrust the rod 
high above her head into the air, so that the pennon 
waved bravely in the morning breeze. With this 
signal Inez knew she could say, “ I understand,” or 
by rapid negatives could order anything repeated. 

And then she had to wait and wait again, her eye 
almost glued to the eye-piece. She could at last 
count the tiles on the roof-tree of the convent. She 
could see a lazy lizard walk over them, and jump 
when he caught flies. The Ursulines’ is not far away 
from Silas Perry’s garden; and, but for the more 
minute signals of the pantomime, she would not have 
needed the field-glass at all. 

Ready as she was, she did not lose one moment of 
poor Ma-ry’s stolen time. Inez at last saw the girl 
appear upon the corridor of the schoolroom, — what 
in older countries would have been called a cloister, 
and perhaps was in St. Ursula’s fore-ordination. She 


or, Show your Passports 389 

passed rapidly along to the corner where a China-tree 
shaded the end of the gallery. Without looking be¬ 
hind her, she sprung upon the railing; she was in the 
tree in a moment, and in a moment more had left it, 
to stand unencumbered on the roof of this wing of 
the spacious buildings. 

When people in a house are looking for a person 
out of a house, there is no point so difficult for them 
to observe as the top of that house; and there is no 
point which they so little think of searching. 

Ma-ry had had less to do with houses than any 
person in Orleans, if one excepts a few old Caddo 
hags who crouched around the market ; but she had 
made the observation just now put on paper, before 
she had been in Nacogdoches an hour. 

If eleven thousand virgins of St. Ursula searched 
for her in eleven thousand niches, or under eleven 
thousand beds, they would not find her; and, while 
they were searching, she would be telling the truth,— 
a business at which she was good, and which St. 
Ursula herself probably would not disapprove. 

The girl turned to Silas Perry’s garden, saw the 
pennon, and clapped her hands gladly. 

The pennon waved gracefully in sympathy. 

Then the pantomime began. Grief, — bitter grief; 
certainty, — utter certainty; and then the sign for 
yesterday. She was very sorry for the news, she 
was certain it was true, and she had only known 
it yesterday. 

The pennon waved gently its sympathy, and its 
steady “ I understand.” 

The girl walked freely from place to place, and 



390 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

made her gestures as boldly as a mistress of ballet 
would do in presence of three thousand people. 

Ransom was taken nine days ago. He is now 
in the soldiers’ room under the court-house, next 
the cathedral. Ever since, they have been trying 
to find Mr. Perry alone. Day before yesterday 
they found him and took him. He is in the gov¬ 
ernor’s own house. After early mass yesterday, one 
of the fathers came to the convent, as was his cus¬ 
tom. After he had confessed three novices, he 
had a talk with Sister Barbara. He told her what 
Ma-ry told Inez. Sister Barbara told Sister Helena, 
in presence of a Mexican girl whom Ma-ry had been 
kind to. The Mexican girl told Ma-ry. 

Ma-ry thought that Ransom and Mr. Perry were 
both to be sent to Cuba. 

Cuba was intimated by an island which would 
be reached by a voyage of ten days, — an island 
in which there were a thousand Spanish soldiers. 

Lest any news should be sent after this vessel, 
an embargo on all vessels would be ordered for 
a fortnight. The embargo was denoted by rowers, 
who were suddenly stopped in their paddling. 

Ma-ry had to repeat this signal, because the 
pennon waved uncertainty. When she was sure all 
was understood, she kissed her hand, and then, 
pointing to the rising sun, bade Inez keep tryst 
the next day but one. 

The glad pennon nodded its assent cheerfully, 
and Ma-ry disappeared. 

News indeed! 

Inez wrote this note to Mr. Bingaman; — 


or, Show your Passports 391 

Inez Perry to Micah Bingaman. 

Thursday Morning. 

My dear Mr. Bingaman, — I have just learned, and am 
certain, that my father is in confinement in the government 
house. 

Old Ransom, our servant, who disappeared ten days ago, 
is shut up closely in the guard-house. 

Both of them are to be sent to Cuba; and, for fear the 
news shall be sent down the river, an embargo will be 
proclaimed to-day. 

I beg you to press up the consul’s clerk to some prompt 
action. Cannot Mr. Clark be sent for? 

Respectfully yours, 

Inez Perry. 

Well written, Inez! You are becoming a woman, 
indeed! Sister Barbara does not teach one to write 
such letters; and I am not sure that even St. Ursula 
fore-ordained them or looked down to them through 
the prophetic vista of many years. 

Antoine was sent with this note to Mr. Bingaman; 
and really glad, for the first time, that there was any¬ 
thing she could do, Inez ordered her breakfast, and 
sat down, determining very fast what she would 
do next. 

And this time the girl ate her-breakfast with a will. 

As she finished it, she heard a question at the 
back steps of the corridor, on the brick walk which 
led to the kitchen, and then a sort of altercation 
with the smart Antoine. 

“Ask Miss Perry,” said a stranger in very bad 
P'rcnch, which Antoine knew was no Creole’s, “ if 
she does not want to buy some jilt” 


392 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

Antoine did not reflect that his young mistress 
overheard every word; and with accent more precise 
than the stranger’s, but with expression far less civil, 
told him to go to hell with his sassafras, that the 
sassafras of Little Vernon was worth all other sassa¬ 
fras, and that he was to leave the garden as soon as 
might be. 

Inez needed no nerving for her first contest with 
Antoine. She rang sharply. 

“Antoine, you are never to speak to any person 
so in my house. Go beg the man’s pardon, and bid 
him come in.” 

Antoine went out, mumbled some apology, and 
returned much crestfallen with the huckster. 

Inez had never said “ my house “ before. 

Inez rose. She scarcely looked at the man, who 
was, indeed, the wildest creature that even the Sun¬ 
day market could have shown her. Bare feet, red 
with mud which must have clung to them for days; 
trousers of skin patched with cotorade, or cotorade 
patched with skin; hair bushy and curling, covering 
and concealing the face ; and the face itself browned 
so that it would be hard to say whether it were In¬ 
dian, mulatto, or Spanish, by the color. A miser¬ 
able Indian blanket torn- in twenty holes, of which 
the largest let through the wearer's head, gave the 
only intimation as to his nationality. 

Inez lifted the dried leaves in her hand, tasted 
some of the fibres and said,—•. 

“ Your JiU is very good ; I wish you had brought 
us more. Take the basket into the herb-room.” 
Then to the obsequious Antoine, who led the way, 




or, Show your Passports 393 

“No, Antoine, wait at the gate for Mr. Binga- 
man’s message: or no, Antoine, go ask him if he 
has no answer for me. I will show the man up¬ 
stairs.” 

The savage shouldered his basket, and followed 
Inez. She threw open the door of a corner room in 
the attic story. He brought the basket in, and 
kicked the door to behind him. And then, and not 
till then, did Inez rush to him. She seized both his 
hands in hers, looked upon him with such joy as an 
hour before she would have said was impossible, 
and then said,— 

“Am I awake? Can it be true? Where did you 
come from? ” 

“Dear Miss Inez,” said Will Harrod, “it is true; 
you are wide awake; and your welcome,” he added 
boldly, “pays for the sufferings of years.” 

“Welcome ! You knew you were welcome, Will! ” 

She had never called him “Will” before; and 
they both knew it. Her cheeks flushed fire, and 
they were both, oh ! so glad and so happy! 

“ There never was a time when I needed you 
so much,” said she eagerly, as she made him sit 
down. 

“ There never is a time when I do not need you,” 
said he bravely. 

“ But why are you in all this rig? I thought I must 
not let Antoine know.” 

“I am afraid you are right. You are certainly 
prudent and wise. Heavens! How careful I have 
been for the last forty-eight hours! Are they all 
crazy here?” 


394 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ I believe the governor is crazy. The intendant 
is surely. But do you know what they have done? 
My father is in prison, and Ransom, dear old Ran¬ 
som, too.” 

“In prison?” 

“In prison, and are to go to Cuba. You know 
what that means. But I feel now as if something 
could be done, now you are here. How are you 
here? Oh, Mr. Harrod, they all told me you were 
dead ! ” 

And here the poor girl fairly cried, and for a mo¬ 
ment lost her self-command. 

“ Did you think I was dead? ” said he eagerly. 

“ Think so? I knew so till Tuesday night: then 1 
dreamed I saw your head over the garden gate, and 
it called me, — twice it called me.” 

“Yes,” said Harrod, laughing; “and it called 
very loud, and it called Caesar and Ransom too. 
But, before anybody could come, the men with 
sticks were after the head, and the poor head had 
to run, and to hide again till this morning. I gave 
them the slip this time.” 

“It was you? It was you? Then, I am not a 
fool! But, Mr. Harrod, you called Caesar: do you 
not know?” 

“Know, my dearest Miss Inez? I know nothing. 
I only know that after escaping from those rascally 
Comanches, after starving to sleep, and waking 
so crazy with hunger that I thought I was in purga¬ 
tory, after such a story of struggle and misery as 
would touch a Turk’s heart, I came out at Natchi¬ 
toches for help, to be clapped into their guard-house. 


or, Show your Passports 395 

Then I knocked two idiots’ heads together, blew out 
what brains one had with his own gun, trusted to my 
friendly river again, and worked my way down on a 
log to Point Coupe, to be arrested again by a 
guarda costa. I bided my time till they were all blind 
drunk one night, stole their boat, and floated down 
here, to be arrested, this time, for stealing the boat. 
But I am used to breaking bounds. Tuesday I 
took refuge with some friendly Caddoes, and by 
Jove! the savage protects what the white man 
hunts to death. My own costume was not so select 
as this. I owe this to their munificence.” 

“ I thought you were dressed like a prince,” said 
Inez, frankly. “ Now you have come, all will be 
well.” 

Then came a little consultation. Inez explained 
to him the reign of terror in which they lived, so far 
as it could be explained. But she found, first of all, 
that she must break his heart by telling of Phil 
Nolan’s fate, and P"anny Lintot’s. All through his 
perils, he had heard no word of that massacre. His 
calling for Caesar had given her the first suspicion of 
his ignorance. 

How much there was to tell him, and how much 
for him to tell her! 

Inez bravely told the horrid story of Phil Nolan’s 
death. She told him, as frankly as she could, why 
she did not at first believe that he was in the party; 
and then, how Caesar had confirmed her. But all 
hope for his life was over, she said, when Mr. Perry 
had found the news of Richards’s treason, and the 
others, as Mr. Perry had found it, and as the reader 


396 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

has heard it. Two years had gone by since the gay 
young man had bidden them good-by in sight of 
the San Antonio crosses. 

“ But now you have come,” she said again bravely, 
“ all will be well; and now we must look forward, 
and not back. Do you remember that?” 

“ It has saved my life a hundred times,” said he. 
“ God only knows where I should be,” he added 
reverently, “ if I had not remembered to look up, 
and not down.” 

“ These people have lost the track of you, as the 
knocker of heads together. You have now only to 
dress, pardon me,” said she, really merry now — to 
think that she should ever be merry again ! — “ and 
to shave, and then you may walk unrecognized 
through our valiant army. Go into my brother’s 
room,” she said. She led him in, and unlocked the 
wardrobes. “ See what you can find: there must be 
some razors somewhere.” 

“ If my right hand has not lost its cunning,” said 
Harrod, entering into her mood. 

“ Take what you find,” said she. “ I wish only 
dear Roland were here to help you. He is not as 
stout as you are, but perhaps you can manage.” 

And so she hurried down-stairs, happy enough, to 
forget for a minute or two her weight of anxiety. 


or. Show your Passports 


397 


CHAPTER XXXV 

SAVAGE LIFE 

u And as his bones were big, and sinews strong, 
Refused no toil that could to slaves belong, 

But used his noble hands the wood to hew.’' 

Palamon and Arcite. 

William Harrod had indeed lived through a life¬ 
time of horrors in the period since he had parted 
from these ladies above San Antonio Bexar. 

It is of such adventures that the personal history 
of the pioneers who gave to us the Valley of the 
Mississippi is full; but it is very seldom that per¬ 
sonal history crowds together so much of danger, and 
so much of trial, in so short a time. 

So soon as he knew that he was a prisoner, Harrod 
frankly accepted the situation of a prisoner, with that 
readiness to adapt himself to his surroundings which 
gave at once the charm and the strength to his 
character. He was to be a slave. The business of 
a slave was to obey. That business he would learn 
and fulfil; not, indeed, with the slightest purpose of 
remaining in that position, but because a man ought 
to make the best of any position, however odiouf. 
With the same cheerful good-temper, therefore, with 
which he would have complied with a whim of Inez, 
whom he loved, or a wish of Eunice, whom he re¬ 
spected, he now complied with a whim of the Long 
Horn, whom at the bottom of his heart he hated, and 
whom he would abandon at the first instant. Nor 


398 Philip Nolan s Friends ; 

was here any treachery to the Long Horn. If Harrod 
or the Long Horn could have analyzed the sentiment, 
it was based on pride, — the pride of a man who knew 
so thoroughly that he was the Long Horn’s superior 
that he need not make any parade about it. He sub¬ 
mitted to his exactions as a sensible person may 
submit to the exactions of a child whom for an hour 
he has in charge, but for whose education he has no 
other opportunities, and is not responsible. 

Day after day, therefore, the Long Horn had more 
and more reason to congratulate himself on the slave 
he had in hand. He did not congratulate himself. 
A process so intricate, and so much approaching to 
reflection, did not belong to the man or to his race. 
But he did leave to Harrod, more and more, those 
cares for which the women of his lodges were too 
weak, and for which he was too lazy; and of such 
cares, in the life of a clan of shirks and cowards, there 
are a few. 

Harrod himself was able to learn some things, and 
to teach many, without his pupils knowing that they 
were taught. This does not mean, as a missionary 
board may suppose, that he built a log-cabin, sent to 
Chihuahua for primers and writing-books, and set the 
Long Horn and the False Heart to learning their 
letters and their pot-hooks. He taught them how to 
take care of their horses; and many a poor brute, 
galled and wincing, had to thank him for relief. He 
simplified their systems of corralling and of tethering. 
And on his own part, thorough-bred woodman as 
he was, his eyes were open every moment to learn 
something in that art which is so peculiarly the 



or, Show your Passports 399 

accomplishment of a gentleman, that no man without 
some skill in it can be called a chevalier. 

It was to such arts that he soon owed a dignity in 
the tribe which materially tended to his own comfort, 
and ultimately effected his escape. 

The great wealth of the Indians of the plains of 
the Colorado of the West, and even of the mountains, 
was in their horses. They treated them horribly, 
partly from ignorance, partly from carelessness, but 
not because they did not value them. It is a 
mistake of the political economists to suppose that 
selfishness will compel us to be tender when our 
passions are aroused. Of course the easiest way to 
obtain a good horse was to steal him, as these fel¬ 
lows had stolen Harrod’s. In periods either of un¬ 
usual need or of unusual courage, they pounced on 
a Spanish outpost, and so provided themselves. 
Perhaps they won horses in fight, as the result of 
a contest in which large numbers overpowered small, 
— the only occasion in which they ever fought will¬ 
ingly. Failing such opportunities, they were fain 
to catch the wild horses, and, after their fashion, to 
break them to their uses. They were passionately 
fond of horse-racing, which is not to be counted as 
only an accomplishment of civilized men. 

So great is the power of the man over the brute, 
that one man alone, and he on foot, can, in the end, 
walk down and take captive even the mustang 1 of the 
prairies. It would be only in an extreme case, of 
course, that that experiment would be tried. But 

1 The derivation is said to be from the Spanish “mesteha ” — that 
which is common property, or belongs to the state, “ rnesta 


400 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

two men alone can catch their horses from a herd 
even of wild ones, almost as well as if they had more 
companions. If they be mounted, so much the 
easier for them. 

In the sublime indolence of the Comanche chiefs, 
therefore, horses beginning to fail, the Long Horn 
and the Sheep’s Tail each of them detached a slave 
to the hard job of taking three or four horses each 
for them, which they would next have to break to 
the saddle. 

The method of capture is based on the habit of the 
wild horse to keep at or near his home. He knows 
that home as well as the queen-bee knows hers; and 
his range is probably not much wider than that through 
which her subjects wander. Each herd has its cap¬ 
tain, or director; and this director does not lead it 
more than fifteen, or at the utmost twenty miles, in 
one direction. When he has passed that limit, he 
returns, and leads his herd with him to the region 
which is familiar to them. 

The hunter observes this limit for any particular 
herd of horses, and then knows what his duty is. He 
builds a corral ready for his captives. Then one of 
the two pursuers, if the party be as small as in Har- 
rod’s case, follows the herd even leisurely. They 
only follow close enough to have their presence ob¬ 
served. The stallion who leads, leads at such pace as 
he chooses, avoiding the pursuer by such route as he 
chooses. If the herd turned against the pursuer, they 
could trample him into the ground. But they do 
not turn : they avoid him. The pursuer keeps stead¬ 
ily behind. At a time agreed upon, one of the two 


or, Show your Passports 401 

men stops with his horse for rest and sleep ; the other 
“ takes up the wondrous tale,” and for twelve hours 
keeps close enough to the wandering herd to keep 
them moving; in turn he stops and sleeps; but his 
companion is awake by this time, has found the trail, 
and keeps the poor hunted creatures in motion. 
There is no stop to sleep for them; and so jaded and 
worn down are they by a few days and nights of this 
motion — almost constant and without sleep — that 
at last no thong nor lasso is needed for their capture. 
You may at last walk up to the tired beast who has 
lost his night’s rest so long, twist your hand into his 
mane, and lead him unresisting into the corral you 
have provided for him. Poor brute ! Only let him 
rest, and you may do what else you will. 

On such an enterprise Will Harrod was sent with 
the Crooked Finger, a young brave who was young 
enough to have some enterprise, and proud enough 
to be pleased at being trusted with so good a wood¬ 
man as Harrod. Each of them was respectably 
mounted, — not very well mounted, for the Long 
Horn and the Sheep’s Tail had but few horses, or 
they would not be hunting more, and they wanted 
the best horses for themselves. Nor, for this line of 
horse-taking, was speed so essential. The young 
fellows found the herd, and made a good guess as to 
its more frequent haunts; then they built their little 
corral; then they took a long night’s sleep; then 
they started for the trail, soon found it, and soon 
overtook the animals they sought. Harrod was mag¬ 
nanimous as always; he bade the Crooked Finger 
take the first rest; he would follow the herd through 
26 



402 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

the twelve hours of that moonlight night, and at 
dawn of the sun the Crooked Finger must strike in. 
When Harrod had reason to suppose that he was 
well on the trail, he also would stop, and he and his 
horse would sleep. 

For two days and two nights this amusement con¬ 
tinued. An occasional pull at some dried meat kept 
soul and body together ; and the horses and the men 
followed their uneventful round, which was, in fact, 
a very irregular oval. 

As Crooked Finger finished his second tour of 
service, he saw Harrod just mounting for his third. 
They simply nodded to each other ; but Harrod dis¬ 
mounted, and busied himself with his horse’s mouth 
and rein. Crooked Finger approached, and gave 
some brief report of the day’s pursuit, to which 
Harrod replied by the proper ughs; and then, as 
Crooked Finger dismounted, he seized the savage in 
his iron arms, much as he remembered to have been 
seized himself by the Long Horn, fastened his elbows 
tight behind him with a leather thong, and kicked 
his horse so resolutely that the horse disappeared. 
Harrod’s horse was tethered too tightly to follow him. 

“ Good-by, Crooked Finger,” said Harrod good- 
naturedly. “ Here is meat enough, if you are careful, 
to take you to the lodges. I am going home.” 

The vanquished savage made not a struggle, and 
uttered not a sound. In Harrod’s place he would 
have scalped the other, and he knew it. He sup¬ 
posed that Harrod did not scalp him, only because 
he had no scalping-knife. 

Harrod was free; and, so far did he have the ad- 


or. Show your Passports 403 

vantage of the tribe, that they made no attempt to 
follow him. And he never feared their pursuit for 
one moment. But he did fear other captors, and he 
feared want of food. This meat provided for the 
hunt would not last forever. This somewhat sorry 
beast he rode must have time to feed. The hunting 
of a man who has neither knife, gun, nor arrows, is 
but poor hunting, — for food, not very nutritious; 
and poor Harrod knew that the time might come 
when he should be glad of the sorriest meal he had 
ever eaten in a Comanche lodge. But Harrod was 
free, and freedom means — ah ! a great deal! 

This chapter cannot tell, and must not try to tell, 
the adventures of days and weeks, even of months, 
at last lengthening out into the second year of his 
exile, as, by one device and another, the poor fellow 
worked eastward and still eastward. He came out 
upon the lodges of the Upper Red River, where Phil 
Nolan had smoked the pipe of peace only the year 
before. He found the memory of his great com¬ 
mander held in high esteem there ; and he had wit 
to represent himself as a scout from his party, only 
accidentally separated from them for a few days. 
Nicoroco remembered the calumet of peace, and 
tidings had come to him of Nolan’s discipline of One 
P2ye, a memory which served Will Harrod well ; and, 
after a sojourn of a few days with Nicoroco, Harrod 
proceeded, refreshed, upon his way. 

It was after this oasis in the desert of that year’s 
life, that the most serious of his adventures came. 
He had been hunted by a troop of savages, of which 
nation he knew not, but whom he dared not trust. 


404 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

He was satisfied that the time had come when he 
must do what he had all along intended to do,— 
abandon his poor brute, who was more and more 
worthless every day, and trust himself to the swollen 
current of the magnificent Red River. Such raft as 
he could make for himself must bear him down till 
he could communicate with the pioneer French 
settlements, and be safe. 

He knew very well, in this crisis, that it was the 
last step which would cost. But Harrod was beyond 
counting risks now: he risked everything every day. 

It is not so easy to make a raft, when one has not 
even a jack-knife. Trees do not accidentally rot into 
the shapes one wants, or the lengths one can handle. 
But Harrod’s ambition for his raft was not aspiring. 
Two logs, so braced and tied that they should not 
roll under him, — only this, and nothing more, was 
the raft which he needed. In a long, anxious day, 
the logs were found. With grape-vines mostly, and 
with the invaluable leather thongs which had been 
his reins so long, the obdurate twisted sticks were 
compelled to cling together. Their power of floating 
was not much; but they were well apart from each 
other in one place, and there Harrod wedged in a 
shorter log, which was, to be his wet throne. And so, 
with a full supply of poles and misshapen paddles, he 
pushed off upon his voyage. The boiling and whirl¬ 
ing stream bore him swiftly down; and there was at 
least the comfort of knowing that the last act of this 
tedious drama had come. How the play would turn 
out, he would know before long. 

Day after day of this wild riding of the waters! 




or. Show your Passports 405 

And, for food, the poorest picking, — grapes, well- 
nigh raisins for dryness, astringent enough at the 
best; sassafras bark was a flavor, but not nourishing; 
snails sometimes; and once or twice a foolish fish, 
caught by the rudest of machinery: but very little at 
the very best. “ How many hired servants of my 
father have bread enough and to spare! ” said poor 
Will Harrod; for he was very hungry. 

Where he was, he did not know: only he was on 
the Red River above “ the Raft.” His hope was to 
come to “ the Raft: ” then he should be only two or 
three days from the highest French farms. Only two 
or three days, Will Harrod, with nothing to eat! 
Armies have perished, because for twenty-four hours 
the regular ration did not come. 

Even the Red River could not last forever. At 
last he came to a raft, so thick and impassable that he 
hoped it was the Great Raft. Any reader who has 
seen the tangled mass of timber above a saw-mill can 
imagine what the Great Raft was, if he will remember 
that it was made up, not of felled logs, but of trees 
with their branches, as for centuries they had been 
whirled down the stream. First formed at a narrow 
gorge of the Red River, it extended upward, at this 
time, one hundred and thirty miles. The river flowed 
beneath. Soil gathered above. Trees took root, 
and grew upon it to be large and strong. In high 
water the river found other courses round it. On 
parts of the Raft a man could travel. Through parts 
of it, a canoe could sail. It was this wreck of matter, 
— this “ tohu va bohn — the utter confusion of 
water which was not land, and land which was not 


406 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

water, which marked for Will Harrod the end of his 
navigation. 

With the precious thongs, a bit of sharp flint, and 
the tail of an imprudent cat-fish, as his only baggage, 
he landed on the bank not far above the water-line, 
and boldly pushed down on the southern shore. He 
thought Natchitoches could not be a hundred miles 
away ; and that night he slept well. The next day he 
made good time. Little to eat, for no cat-fish rose 
to his bait; still that night he slept well. The next 
day came the worst repulse of all. 

A bayou back from the stream — all gorged with 
bark and trees and wreck like the main river—cut 
off his eastward course. Nothing for it but to 
return! 

Never! That way was sure death. Will ventured 
on the Raft itself. To cross the bayou proved 
impossible. One could not swim there: one could 
not walk there, more than one could fly. But the 
river itself was here more practicable, — not for 
swimming, but for walking. So old was the Raft that 
the logs had rotted on the surface, and weeds and 
bushes had grown there. It was more like a bit of 
prairie, than of river. One must watch every step. 
Still one could walk here; and, though the channel 
was very broad here, Will Harrod held his course, 
slowly and not confidently. 

No food that day! not a snail, not a grape, not a 
lizard, far less red-fish or cat-fish. And that night’s 
sleep was not so sound. Water is but little refresh¬ 
ment, when one breakfasts on a few handfuls of it, 
after such a day; but with such breakfast Will Harrod 


or, Show your Passports 407 

must keep on. Keep on he did; but he knew his 
legs dragged, that he missed his foothold when he 
ought not, and that his head spun weirdly, that he 
did not see things well. 

“This is one way to die,” said poor Will, aloud. 
And then, sitting on a moss-grown cypress stick, he 
looked wistfully round him ; and then, when a belated 
grasshopper lighted by his side, with a clutch of 
frenzy he snatched the creature, and held him help¬ 
less in his hand. 

Victory! 

The grasshopper, yet living, was tied tight to the 
end of the little thong which had served for a line all 
along. A stout acacia-thorn, one of a dozen at Har- 
rod’s girdle, was tied in a knot just above. And, with 
cheerfulness he had thought impossible, he went to 
the nearest open hole, to bob and bob again for his 
life. 

But how soon the dizziness returned ! How many 
hours did he sit there in the sun? Will Harrod never 
knew. Only at last, a gulp, a pull at the cord, and a 
noble fish — food for three or four days, as Will 
Harrod had been using food — was in the air, — was 
flapping on the so-called ground at his side. 

Victory! 

With the bit of sharpened stone which had served 
him all along, he killed the fish, opened him, and 
cleaned him. Little thought or care for fire! He 
returned carefully to his lair, to put by the sacred 
implements of the chase, which had served him so 
well. Weak as he was, he tripped, — his foot was 
tangled in a grape-vine, — and he fell. As he dis- 


408 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

entangled himself, he could see an alligator rise — 
not very rapidly, either—from the stream, make 
directly to the prize; and, before poor Will was free, 
the brute had plunged with the fish into the river. 

“ Miss Inez,” said he, as in the evening they sat in 
the gallery, and he told this story, “ I never despaired 
till then. But my head was swimming. The beast 
looked like the very Devil himself. I lay back on 
the ground, and I said, < Then I will die/ And, 
will you believe me? I fell asleep. 

“I woke up,— I do not know how soon. But, as 
I woke, my one thought was of sitting and bobbing 
there. What had I seen when I was bobbing? Had 
not I seen a log cut with an axe? Why did I not 
think of that before? Because I could think only of 
my bait and my line. Was it cut by an axe? I went 
back to the stream. It was cut by an axe. It was an 
old dug-out,—a Frenchman’s pirogue , bottom up. 
How quick I turned it over! Where it came into 
that bayou, it could go out. I laid into it my pre¬ 
cious line and cutting-stone. I broke me off sticks 
for fending-poles. I was strong as a lion now. I 
bushwhacked here, I poled there, I paddled there. 
In an hour I was free; and then the sun was so hot 
above me, that I fainted away in the bottom of the 
canoe.” 

“ You poor, poor child ! ” sobbed the sympathizing 
Inez. 

“ And, the next I knew, it was evening, and an old 
Frenchman held me in his arms, at the shore, and 
was pouring milk down my throat in spoonfuls. 
Weak as I was, I clutched his pail, and he thought I 


or, Show your Passports 409 

should have drunk myself to death. He did not 
clap me in irons, though I did come from above 


CHAPTER XXXVI 

IN PRISON, AND YE VISITED ME 

“ Curse on the unpardoning prince, whom tears can draw 
To no remorse, who rules by lions’ law, 

And deaf to prayers, by no submission bowed, 

Rends all alike, the penitent and proud.” 

Palamofi and A rcite. 

But Miss Inez and Master William did not spend 
that morning in telling or in hearing this tale. It 
is from long narratives, told in more quiet times, 
that we have condensed it for the reader. 

No. They had other affairs in hand. 

Inez had been diligently at work preparing her 
costume for the day, before Antoine had summoned 
her to breakfast. Chloe had been as diligently at 
work in the laundry, while breakfast went on. 

While ITarrod made his toilet, — a matter of no 
little difficulty, — Inez made hers. 

At last he came down-stairs, shaven and shorn, 
washed and brushed, elegantly dressed, with a ruffled 
shirt, an embroidered waistcoat, and a blue coat; 
dressed, in short, in the costume of civilized Europe 
or America, as he had not been dressed for two 
years. 

He went through the hall, and from room to room 
of the large parlors down-stairs, but saw Inez no¬ 
where. In the front parlor was a little sister of char- 


410 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

ity who seemed absorbed in a book of devotions. 
Harrod touched his hat, and asked if he could see 
Miss -Perry; to which the sister, without so much as 
raising her modest eyes to the handsome Kentuckian, 
only replied, “ Pas encore .” 

Harrod struck the bell which stood in the hall, and 
summoned Antoine. The respectful servant won¬ 
dered if he had left the garden gate open, but did 
not distress himself. Harrod bade him call his 
mistress. Antoine thought she was in the parlor, 
but, as he looked in, saw no one but the sister of 
charity. She asked him also if he would summon 
his mistress. Antoine said he did not know where 
the was, but he would try. 

The minute he was well out of the hall, the sister 
of charity hopped up, and executed a pirouette, to 
Harrod’s amazement, clapped her hands, and ran 
across the room to him. “ So, sir, I knew you after 
two years’ parting, and you did not know me after an 
hour’s ! That shows who understands masquerading 1 
best.” 

“ Who would know you, with that ridiculous hand¬ 
kerchief tied round your mouth and nose, and those 
devout eyes cast down on your prayer-book? At 
the least, you cannot say my disguise covered me.” 

“Indeed,” said Inez, laughing, “that was its weak¬ 
est side.” 

And she proceeded to explain her plans for the 
day. She was going to the prison to see old Ran¬ 
som. Her father was out of the question. But an 
interview with Ransom could be gained, she thought; 
for she believed, as it proved rightly, that no such 


or, Show your Passports 411 

calendar of sisters was kept at the prison gate that the 
warders would know of a certain new-comer, whether 
she were or were not en rtgle* Of her own costume 
Inez had no doubt whatever. 

And so they parted,— Inez for this duty, Harrod 
to see the American consul, Mr. Pollock, Mr. Binga- 
man, and the other Americans, and to determine 
what should be done in this rudest violation yet of 
the rights of the American residents in Orleans. 

At the Palace of Justice—if it may be so called 
— Inez had even less difficulty than she had appre¬ 
hended. The place was not strictly a prison. That 
is, the upper stories were used for the various pur¬ 
poses of business of the fussy administration of the 
little colony; and, below, a dozen large cells and a 
certain central hall had been by long usage set apart 
as places of confinement, barred and bolted, for pris¬ 
oners awaiting trial, and for anybody else, indeed, 
who, for whatever reason, was not to be sent to the 
prison proper. 

To the sentinel on duty at the door, Inez simply 
said, — 

“ You have a sick man here.” 

“ Two, my lady. Will my lady tell me the name 
of the sinner she seeks? ” 

“ If there be two,” said Inez, speaking in Spanish, 
with which the French sentinel was not so familiar, “ I 
will see them both; ” and, acknowledging his courtesy 
as he passed, she entered into the general prison, 
where nine or ten poor dogs sat, lay, or paced uneasily. 
Among them she instantly saw Ransom, sitting hand¬ 
cuffed on a chest. 


412 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

He did not recognize her, and she affected not to 
see him; but she passed close to him, and said quite 
aloud in English, n Ransom, take care that you are 
very sick when I come to-morrow.” Then she passed 
on into the side cell, which had been opened at her 
direction. The particular Juan or Manuel who was 
lying there had not expected her; but he was none 
the worse for the guava-jelly she left him, nor that 
she sponged his hands and face from the contents of 
the generous canteen she bore. She read to him a 
few simple prayers, visited the other invalid in the 
same fashion, and was gone. 

The next day, however, Inez had three patients. 
She had soon disposed of those whom she saw the 
day before, and then found herself, as she had in¬ 
tended, alone with Ransom, who lay on the shelf in 
his cell with a few leaves and stems of the sugar-cane 
under him. 

Ransom explained that on the day he was missed, 
having been lured away, just as he left the brig, into a 
narrow street where none “ but them Greasers ” lived, 
— as he was talking with the man who had summoned 
him, he was caught from behind, his arms pinioned 
behind him, he tripped up, steel cuffs locked upon 
his feet, and in this guise was carried by four men 
into a neighboring baraca. As soon as night fell, his 
captors brought him to the Government House. 
They had since had him under examination there 
three times. They had questioned him about Nolan 
and Harrod, about Mr. Perry and Roland, about 
Lonsdale and the “ Firefly,” and about General 
Bowles. They had asked about the message sent 


or, Show your Passports 41 3 

up the river by Mr. Perry the previous spring. But 
specially they had questioned him about the Lodge 
of Free-Masons, to find whether Mr. Perry, Mr. 
Roland, or Mr. Lonsdale belonged to it; and about 
what Ransom knew, and what he did not know, of 
the movements of one Sopper, an American, whom 
the authorities suspected of raising a plot among the 
slaves. 

Now, the truth was that Ransom knew Sopper 
very well. He probably knew Ransom better than 
he did any other person in Orleans, where the man 
was, indeed, a stranger. 

“They’d seen me with him, Miss Inez. He’s a 
poor critter; hain’t got no friends, anyway, ’n’ I 
wanted to keep him out o’ mischief. He’s one of 
them Ipswich Soppers,— no, he ain’t: he came from 
Sacarap, —■ they was a poor set; but they did zwel 
as they knew how. They’d seen me with him, so 
I knew they was no use of lyin’ about it, ’n’ I told 
’em I knew him, cos I did.” 

“ Ransom, there is never any use of lying,” said 
poor Inez, doing something to keep up her character. 

But it was clear that Ransom’s examination had 
been of that sort which did nobody any good, and 
him least good of all. Inez could see, as he detailed 
it, that he had made the authorities suspect him 
more than ever; and, from the tenor of the last ex¬ 
amination, she saw that the authorities thought that 
he was an accomplice in the negro plot, regarding 
which they were most sensitive. 

“ ’T ain’t no account-, mum, anyway, now Mr. 
Perry knows I’m here: he’ll go to the guv’ner, 


414 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

and the guv’ner ’ll have to let me out. Did n’t have 
no way to send ye word, or I’d ’a’ sent before.” 

Then Inez told him that her father had been 
seized also. 

The poor old man started from his bed, and could 
hardly be kept from rushing to the rescue. 

In one instant he saw the position; and in the 
same instant his whole countenance changed, and 
his easy courage fell. 

Often as he had thwarted Silas Perry, and often as 
he had disobeyed him, in his heart he was a faith¬ 
ful vassal, and nothing else. He would have “ died 
with rapture if he saved his king;” but when that 
king was checkmated his truncheon fell at once. 

Inez went farther, and said her fear was that they 
would both be sent to Cuba for trial. 

“No, Miss Inez: ef your father’s in prison, they 
ain’t no more trial for me. Tried me three times 
a’ready, and I give ’em a bit o’ my mind each time. 
No. They’s done with me.” And he sank into 
silence. 

Inez broke it with a consolation she did not feel. 

“ Keep up good spirits, dear Ransom,” she said. 
“ We are all at work for you. Mr. Harrod has 
come home, and he is at work, and Mr. Binga- 
man and the consul. Aunt Eunice got home last 
night, and she will work for you. Mr. Lonsdale 
will work. We shall never let you come to harm.” 

The old man sat silent for a moment more. Then 
he said calmly, “No, mum, they’s done with me. 
Bingaman’s no account, never was, unless he had 
Mr. Perry to tell him what to do. Ain’t none on 



or. Show your Passports 41 5 

’em knows what to do, ef Mr. Perry don’t tell ’em. 
Captain Harrod, he’s a gentleman; but they don’t 
none on ’em know him here. No, mum, they’s 
done with me.” And he made another long pause. 
“They’ll send ye father to Cuby, and they’ll 
hang me. They ’ll hang me down by the arsenal, 
—jest where they hanged them Frenchmen. It’s 
jest like ’em ; ’n’ I told ’em so, I did. Says I, ‘ You 
hanged them Frenchmen, and you know you’ve 
been all wrong ever since ye did it,’ says I. But 
they did n’t hang ’em theyselves: they did n’t dare 
to. Darned ef they could get a white man in all 
Orleans to hang ’em. Cum to the * Hingham Gal,’ 
— she was lyin’ here then, — ’n’ there was a poor 
foolish critter in her, named Prime, ’n’ they offered 
him twenty doubloons to hang ’em; ’n’ he says, 
says he, ‘I’m a fool,’ says he, and he was a fool, 

‘ but I ain’t so big a fool,’ says he, ‘ as you think 
I be,’ says he ; ’n’ they had to get a nigger to hang 
’em, cos no white man would stand by ’em. That’s 
what they ’ll do with me,” said poor old Ransom. 

In speaking thus, Ransom was alluding to O’Reilly’s 
horrible vengeance upon the Creole gentlemen who 
had engaged in a plot to throw off the Spanish rule 
more than twenty years before. 

“ Ransom,” said the girl, sobbing her heart out, 
“ if they hang you they will hang me too.” Then 
she promised him that she would return on Sunday, 
bade him be sure he was sick in bed at noon, and 
with a faint heart found her way home. 

She would have attempted more definite words 
of consolation if she had had them to offer. But 


416 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

Harrod’s report of yesterday had not been en¬ 
couraging. The consular clerk had been roused 
to some interest, but to no resource. The em¬ 
bargo had been proclaimed. That had confirmed 
Inez’s news, and had awakened all the merchants. 
Harrod had made him, the clerk, promise to call 
on the governor with him at one o’clock. By way 
of preparing for that interview, he made one or two 
visits among English and American merchants, when 
suddenly, to his disgust, he found himself evidently 
watched by a tall man of military aspect, though 
not in uniform. Harrod was close by the Govern¬ 
ment House. He determined, at least, to strike high 
and to die game. He would not be jugged without 
one interview with the governor in person. 

He entered the house,—went by as many senti¬ 
nels as he could, by what is always a good rule, 
pretending to be quite at home, giving a simple 
hasty salute to the sentries, — and so came to the 
governor’s door, as he had been directed. Here 
he had to send in his card ; but he was immediately 
admitted. 

He explained that he had expected to be joined 
by the American consul. His message, however, 
was important, and he would not wait. 

“And what is your honor’s business?’’ said the 
courtly governor. 

“ It is to ask on what ground Mr. Silas Perry 
is held in confinement, and to claim his release 
as an American citizen.’’ 

“ Don Silas Perry in confinement! ” said the gov¬ 
ernor with a start of surprise, which was not at all 


or, Show your Passports 417 

acted. He was surprised that this Mr. Harrod should 
have come at his secret. “ Where is he in con¬ 
finement?” 

“No one knows better than your excellency,” 
said Harrod, who noted his advantage: “he is 
imprisoned under this roof. Your excellency can 
show me to his apartments, unless your excellency 
wishes me to take your excellency there.” 

This was a word too much, and probably did 
not help Master William. It gave his excellency 
time to rally, and to ask himself who this brown, 
well-dressed man of action and of affairs might 
be. 

“You have sent me your card,” said he; “you 
have not explained to me who has honored me 
by introducing you, nor do I understand that you 
represent the American consul. I think, indeed, 
that the American consul is not in the city, that 
he is at the Balize.” 

“ Your excellency does not wish to stand upon 
punctilio,” said Harrod. “The consul’s clerk will 
be here in five minutes. The American consul will 
be here to night. It is in the name of the Americans 
of the city that I speak.” 

The governor looked his contempt. “ His Majesty 
the King of Spain has given these gentlemen per¬ 
mission to reside here to attend to an unfortunate 
commerce, all but contraband, which will end in a 
few months at latest; but his Majesty has never 
been informed, till this moment, that these gentle¬ 
men expected him to consult them in the adminis¬ 
tration of justice.” Then, 3 s if lie were weary of 
27 


41 8 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

the interview, he turned to a servant who gave him 
a card, and, as if to dismiss Harrod, said, “ Show 
this gentleman in.” 

To Harrod’s dismay, the military man entered, 
who had tracked him in the street. 

He thought that his game was up, and that he was 
to be put into the room next to Mr. Perry’s. But 
he had no disposition to surrender a moment before 
his time came. Without noticing hint or stranger, 
he said, — 

“ If your excellency despises the Americans here, 
you may have more regard for the Americans at 
home. Your excellency has the name of a friend of 
peace. Your minister at home is called the Prince 
of Peace. Your excellency has simply to consider 
that, if Mr. Silas Perry and Mr. Seth Ransom are 
not free to-morrow night, a courier will carry that 
news to the Tennessee River in ten days, to Ken¬ 
tucky in five more. Let it once be known that two 
American citizens have been sent to Cuba, and ten 
thousand riflemen from Kentucky and Tennessee will 
muster at their ports to avenge them. The boats are 
there, as your excellency knows; the river is rising, 
as your excellency knows. Whether the ‘ Prince of 
Peace ’ will thank you for what your excellency 
brings down hither upon the river, your ex¬ 
cellency knows also.” And William Harrod rose. 
“ I see your excellency is engaged. I will find 
the vice-consul, and will return with him.” 

“ Stay a moment,” said the military gentleman, 
“ stay a moment, sir. Do I understand that Mr. 
Perry is in confinement?” 


or. Show your Passports 419 

“ He is under lock and bar in this house, sir,” said 
Harrod fiercely. 

“ And for what crime? ” said the stranger. 

“ For no crime under the heavens of God,” said 
Harrod, now very angry, “ for no crime, as you 
would say if you knew him. You must ask his 
excellency on what accusation.” 

“ I will take the liberty to ask his excellency that 
question,” said the other. “ Mr. Perry is my near 
friend,” he added, turning to the governor; “he is 
the near friend of the King of England, to whom he 
has rendered distinguished services. I know your 
excellency too well to think that, at this critical 
juncture, your excellency would willingly thwart the 
government I represent, by the arrest of a person 
whose services, I had almost said, we require.” 

The picture was a striking one, as these two fine 
young men stood, the one on each side of the gov¬ 
ernor, who was himself to the last degree annoyed 
that by his own blunder he had lost the one great 
advantage in Spanish statecraft, the advantage of 
dealing with each alone. 

“ My dear Mr. Lonsdale/ he said, giving to the 
English diplomatist his hand, “ if you will do me the 
favor to dine with me, I can explain perhaps what 
you do not understand. If our young friend here, 
the ambassador from Kentucky, will meanwhile study 
the Constitution of the United States, he will under¬ 
stand perhaps that I cannot treat with envoys from 
separate States. — Good-morning, sir:” this sharply 
to Harrod. “ If you will take an early lunch with us, 
it is waiting now: ” this courteously to Lonsdale. 


420 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

“ I am greatly obliged,” said Lonsdale coolly. “ I 
have business with this gentleman. I will do myself 
the honor of calling again.” And, with hauteur 
quite equal' to what might be expected from the 
Duke of Clarence, he withdrew. 


CHAPTER XXXVII 

FACE TO FACE 

“ A brave heart bids the midnight shine like day, 

Friendship dares all things, when love shows the way.’* 

A ndromaque. 

As they left the Government House, Harrod hastily 
explained to Lonsdale who he was, and told what he 
himself knew of the passages of these dark days, and 
why he knew so little. Lonsdale explained who he 
was, — that he had but just landed from his own 
galliot, in which he had brought Miss Perry, and the 
old lady whom Miss Perry had gone to Natchez to 
find. But they had left Natchez before any bad 
news, even of Ransom’s disappearance, had arrived 
there; and the first intelligence Mr. Lonsdale had 
had of either calamity was in the words he had heard 
William Harrod use at the governor’s. 

He had parted from Miss Perry only at the land¬ 
ing, having promised to join her again at her own 
house within an hour. He was therefore sure that up 
till her arrival at home she had had no intimation of 
the wretched news. 

Harrod was quick enough to observe that in his 


or, Show your Passports 421 

language there was a certain air of authority, as if he 
had a right to protect Miss Perry, and to be con¬ 
sulted intimately in her affairs. For this, Harrod 
had not been prepared by Inez’s hurried narrative. 
Inez had spoken of Mr. Lonsdale as the English 
gentleman whose escort they had received in coming 
from Texas; but she had scarcely alluded to him 
again. 

The two went hastily to Mr. Perry’s house, filling 
up, as each best could, the immense gaps in the in¬ 
formation which each had, as to these matters in 
which each had personal reasons for intense interest. 
Let them do their best, however, there were large 
chasms unfilled. For what reason was Mr. Perry 
arrested? For what, poor Ransom? What new 
motive could they now bring to bear ? And should 
William Harrod not make good his threat of send¬ 
ing a courier through General Bowles’s country into 
Tennessee and Kentucky ? 

Inez was away on her first visit to the prison when 
the young men arrived. They found Eunice in all 
the agony of surprise, anger, and doubt, having re¬ 
ceived, from the very incompetent lips of Antoine 
and Chloe, such broken account as they could give of 
the little which Miss Inez had chosen to intrust to 
them. Eunice was writing to the consul as they 
entered. By her side was the lovely white-haired 
Mother Ann, who had come so gladly with Eunice, 
certain that she should find her lost grandchild, and 
who now found herself in the midst of another 
tragedy so strange. The beautiful old lady had not 
learned the lessons of sixty years in vain. Her face 




422 Philip Nolan's Friends ; 

had the lovely saint-like expression of the true saint, 
who had never shirked life in a convent, but who had 
taken it in its rough-and-tumble, and had come off 
conqueror and more than conqueror. 

“ Never mind me, dear Eunice,” she said, in her 
half-Quaker way: “let us do what we may for thy 
brother first, and for this brave old fellow who loves 
my dear girl so. What is a few hours to me, now I 
am so safe, so sure, and so happy ? ” 

Upon their rapid consultations Inez came in, still 
in the sister’s costume. She flung herself into 
Eunice’s arms, and sobbed out her grief. A com¬ 
mon cause gave frankness and cordiality to her wel¬ 
come of Lonsdale such as she had never honored 
him with before. Then came rapid conferences, and 
eager mutual information. Inez could tell, and 
Harrod could tell, to this group, what had not been 
revealed to Ant oine and to Chloe of Ma-ry’s informa¬ 
tion. Harrod and Lonsdale had to tell of the gov¬ 
ernor’s coldness, and the dead-lock they were at 
there. But both of them agreed that they must go 
at once to the American consulate to report; and 
Lonsdale said, very simply, that he could and would 
bring in all the intercession of Mr. Hutchings, the 
English consul. Such an outrage made a common 
cause. 

“ And we and this dear, dear, dear lady will go, — 
we can go on foot, dear aunt, — and liberate my 
darling from the convent.” This was Inez’s excla¬ 
mation, and then she stopped. “ But what a blessing 
that she was not liberated before! Where should 
we be now, but for the White Hawk?” 


or, Show your Passports 423 

Then they all turned to Harrod and to Lonsdale, to 
make sure that they should not want her at the con¬ 
vent still. But it was agreed that they now had, in 
all probability, all the information that Ma-ry could 
give. The chances were vastly against their gaining 
more. 

“ I must have the dear child here,” said Eunice 
promptly. 

“ Thank God you say that! ” said Inez. 

And, so soon as she could transform herself into 
Miss Inez Perry, they were all three on their way. 

It was not the regulation day for seeing visitors; 
there had been no chance to consult the pope or the 
vicar-general; and St. Ursula had not provided in 
her last will for any such exigency. But Eunice was 
so forceful in her quietness, and dear “ Mother Ann ” 
was so eager in her quietness, for she did not say one 
word, that even Sister Barbara gave way; and Inez 
was obliged to own to herself that even she could 
not have improved on the method of the negotiation. 
Sister Barbara disappeared. She was not gone long. 
She came back with the White Hawk, to whom she 
had said nothing of her visitors. 

The moment the pretty creature entered the room, 
the quiet, lovely grandmother sprang across like a 
girl, and flung her arms around her, and kissed her 
again and again. “ My dear, dear, dear child! ” 
This was all she could say. The girl’s likeness to her 
murdered mother was enough for the other mother 
who had brooded over her loss so long. 

And Ma-ry, dear child, kissed her, and soothed 
her, and stroked her beautiful white hair, and said 


424 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

little loving words to her, now as a child might do, 
just learning to speak, now as a woman of long ex¬ 
perience might do. How much these two would 
have to tell each other, and to learn from each other! 
And the first meeting was all that the eager heart of 
either could demand. 

“ Dear, dear, dear grandmamma,” for the child had 
been teaching herself this word in anticipation. 
“Was she not very lovely?” 

“ My darling, she was very lovely. You are her 
image, my child. I knew you were named Mary. 
My sister was named Mary, and you are named for 
her. I have here,” and she pointed to her heart, 
“ your dear, dear mother’s last letter. She says she 
had named you ‘ Mary * and she says you were the 
only baby in the settlement, and the pet of them all. 
And I was to come and help take care of you when 
you were a baby; and now at last I have come.” 

Sister Barbara was as much affected as the others. 
She agreed with Miss Eunice, that it was not prob¬ 
able that Ma-ry’s studies would flourish much under 
the stimulus of this new element in her life. And it 
was also so improbable that any similar case had 
transpired in the eleven thousand experiences of the 
eleven thousand virgins, that their memoirs were not 
even consulted for a precedent; and failing the vicar- 
general and the pope, as above, Sister Barbara 
consented that the White Hawk should go home 
with the visitors, and stay till next week. Alas, for 
Sister Barbara! “ to-morrow never comes,” and “ next 
week” never came for this return to study. 

Ma-ry, meanwhile, signalled to Inez, to ask whether 


or, Show your Passports 425 

she might not be needed on the house-top the next 
morning. Things might be mentioned in the house 
which needed to be published there. But Inez re¬ 
assured the loyal girl; and in five minutes more her 
little packet was ready, and she kissed Sister Barbara 
“ good-by/’ forever, — as it proved. 

“But the little dog, ma’m’selle,— the little dog. 
He will be wretched without you, and you will be 
wretched without him.” /' 

With the gravity of a bishop, and with a penitent’s 
conscience smiting her, Ma-ry explained that she 
had not seen the little dog since yesterday. And 
Inez hastened to add that he was safe at home. 
And so, with some jest on the dog’s preferring the 
fare at one house to that of the other, they parted. 
And thus, to use the common phrase which Miss 
Edgeworth so properly condemns, Miss Ma-ry’s 
“ education was finished.” 

They met the gentlemen at dinner. Antoine and 
Felix were tolerated as long as might be; and, for so 
long time, the talk was of Harrod’s experience, of 
Lonsdale’s trials, of Mrs. Willson’s wanderings, and 
of Ma-ry’s recollections. But, as soon as these two 
worthies could be dismissed, serious consultations 
began again. 

The two consuls had had as little success as the 
unofficial gentlemen had had. Indeed, they had 
anticipated no success. Arbitrary as the Spanish 
rule always was, it had till lately been sensible and 
mild until Salcedo, to wh'om, rightly or not, Harrod 
ascribed the change of policy which had swept even 
De Nava away, and whom Harrod made responsible 


426 Philip Nolan’s Friends ; 

for Nolan’s murder. Under Salcedo, the rule had 
been abrupt, tyrannical, and inexplicable. 

“You would think,” said Lonsdale, “that the 
approaching cession to the French prefect would 
make the Spaniards more tolerant and gentle. But, 
on the other hand, they seem to want to cling to 
power to the last, and to show that Laussat is nobody. 
Laussat is a fool, so our consul thinks, —a fussy, pre¬ 
tentious fool. He came here as prefect, with great 
notions, with great talk of the army behind him ; and 
he has not yet so much as a corporal’s guard for 
his ceremonies. The Spaniards make fun of him; 
and even the Frenchmen cannot make much else of 
him. 

“Yes; if he were not here, we should fare better. 
From this double-headed government, it is hard to 
know what we may look for. One thing is fortunate,” 
he added dryly: “ we have three or four frigates and 
their tenders, within a day of the Balize. I have 
bidden Hutchings send down word that they are to 
be off the Pass till they have other orders.” 

Eunice only looked her gratitude; but she cer¬ 
tainly blushed crimson. Inez was forced to say, 
“ How good you are! ” But this time she was 
frightened. Even she did not dare to say, “ Who 
are you?” 

But who was he? Who was this man who said to 
the English fleet, “ Sail here,” or “ Sail there,” and it 
obeyed him? And why did Aunt Eunice blush? 
What had they been doing and saying at Natchez, 
and in this six-days’ voyage down the river? Was 
Aunt Eunice to be Duchess of Clarence, after all? 


or, Show your Passports 427 

The truth was, that Mr. Lonsdale and Aunt Eunice 
had come at each other very thoroughly. First, their 
correspondence had helped to this; for nothing 
teaches two people who have been much together, 
how much they rest on each other, as an occasional 
separation, with its eager yearning for messages or 
letters. Horace Lonsdale needed no teaching on 
this matter. Eunice was perhaps surprised when she 
found how lonely a summer was in which she did 
not see him as often as once a week. After this part¬ 
ing had come the renewed intimacy at Natchez; and, 
from the first, they found themselves on a personal 
footing different from that of the spring. She had 
found him the loyal and chivalrous English gentle¬ 
man, which, indeed, he had shown himself from the 
first moment that she had known him. He had 
found her always the same unselfish woman she was 
then and there. It had been hard for him to come at 
her, to give to her the whole certainty of his enthu¬ 
siastic admiration; because Eunice Perry was quite 
out of the fashion of asking herself what people 
thought of her, or, indeed, of believing that they 
thought of her at all. If the truth were told, Horace 
Lonsdale had not been used, in other circles, to meet 
women as entirely indifferent to his social position as 
was Eunice Perry. He might, indeed, have travelled 
far, before he found a woman so indifferent to her 
own accomplishments, so unconscious of remarkable 
beauty, and so willing to use each and every gift in 
the service of other people, as she. 

To pay court to this unconscious vestal, was no 
easy matter. So Horace Lonsdale thought. Words 


428 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

or attentions which many a pretty countrywoman of 
his would have welcomed with delight, in the false 
. and unbalanced social habits of London in those 
days, passed by Eunice Perry as if he did not exist, 
had never spoken the word, or offered the attention. 
He found very soon, that, if he meant to render her 
service, it must be by serving tljose she loved; and 
he counted himself fortunate, and fortunate he was, 
that the chaotic condition of the times in which they 
moved gave him, once and again, the opportunity 
to do so. 

The absurd stories as to who and what he was 
had, of course, their share of foundation. He was a 
younger son of the distinguished family whose name 
he bore, and had been placed in the English Foreign 
Office, when yet young, for education and for pro¬ 
motion. Choosing to use the opportunities of his 
position, in a time when every day furnished the 
material for a romance, instead of flirting at Almack’s 
or riding in Hyde Park, he had been intrusted with 
one and another confidential duty, in which he had 
distinguished himself. As the new century opened, 
the plots of Miranda in Cuba and on the Spanish 
Main, the insurrection in St. Domingo, and the cer¬ 
tainty of a change in Louisiana, made it necessary for 
his chiefs to seek more accurate information than 
they had, as to the condition of the Spanish colonies. 
Such a man as Lonsdale would not shrink from an 
appointment which gave him almost carte blanche in 
travelling in those regions, then almost unknown to 
Europe. His social standing, his rank in the diplo¬ 
matic service, and the commission he was intrusted 


or. Show your Passports 429 

with, gave him the best introductions everywhere. 
And, when the ladies of our party met him at 
Antonio, he was in good faith pursuing the inquiries 
regarding the power of Spain which had been con¬ 
fided to him. 

The absurd story that he was the Duke of Clar¬ 
ence had grown up in some joke in a London club; 
but it had found its way to one and another English 
ship on the West India station, and from these vessels 
had diffused itself, as poor jokes will, in the society of 
almost every place where Lonsdale made any stay. 
In truth, it was very absurd. He was five years 
younger than the duke, was taller and handsomer. 
But he had light hair worn without powder, a fresh 
healthy complexion, so that, as Inez afterward told 
him when she condescended to take him into favor, 
he looked so handsome and so much as one wanted 
a king’s son to look, that everybody took it for 
granted that he was one. However that might be, 
the rumor was sometimes a very great convenience 
to Horace Lonsdale, and sometimes such a bore and 
nuisance as to arouse all his rage. He said, himself, 
that, whatever else it did, it always doubled the 
charges on his tavern bills. 

Lonsdale had not let the favorable opportunity 
pass, which his visit to Natchez, and the escort he 
gave Eunice Perry to New Orleans, afforded him. 
He told her, like a gentleman, that her love and life 
were inestimably precious to him; that the parting 
for a summer had taught him that they never could 
be parted again. And Eunice, who for fifteen years 
had let the admiration of a hundred men drift by her 



430 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

unobserved and unrequited ; who had quietly put fifty 
men on their guard that they should come no closer, 
and had sent fifty away sadly who would not take her 
hint, and pressed too near,— Eunice told him the 
truth. She told him that once and again, in the 
anxieties of that sumhier, she had caught herself 
wishing for his sympathy and counsel, — nay, if the 
truth must be told, for a cheery tone of his, or a 
cheery look of his, before she had wished even for 
her brother’s help, or for Inez’s love; and, when she 
said this to Horace Lonsdale, Horace Lonsdale was 
made perfectly happy. 

But all this narrative, so uninteresting to the young 
reader of seventeen, who seeks in these pages only 
the history of her country, does but interrupt the 
story of the fate of Silas Perry and Seth Ransom. 

The formal interview with the Spanish governor, 
and with Laussat, the French prefect, took place the 
next morning after Lonsdale and Miss Perry came 
down the river. Only these two officers with their 
secretaries, and the fussy young Salcedo in a very 
brilliant uniform, were pr«sentto represent the French 
and Spanish Governments: to represent the insulted 
merchants, only the English and American con¬ 
suls, with Mr. Lonsdale and William Harrod, were 
admitted. 

And, oh the horrors of the red tape of a Spanish 
inquiry! Ransom had not exaggerated when he said 
they copied what he said four times for the king 
to read. And what with soothing Laussat’s ruffled 
dignity by interpreting into French, and meeting 
Castilian punctilio by talking Spanish, while every 


or, Show your Passports 431 

person present spoke English and understood it, the 
ordinary fuss was made more fussy, and the ordi¬ 
nary misery more miserable. 

But no promise, either of a trial or of a release, 
could be extorted. Laussat, the Frenchman, talked 
endlessly; but he had, and knew he had, no power, 
— strictly speaking, he had no business there. The 
same might be said of young Salcedo, who talked, 
however, more than any one but his father, and to 
no purpose. He had come, as was his wont, without 
being asked. The governor had summoned Laussat, 
only as a later man in power used to invoke Mr. 
Jorkinswhen he wanted to avoid responsibility. The 
governor himself said little, and explained nothing. 
The consuls made their protests, made their threats, 
which were written down “ for the king to read; ” 
but the governor declared he was under orders. 
Count Cornel, Minister of the Colonies at Madrid, 
had written thus and so; and who was a poor local 
governor to stand one instant before Count Cornel? 

After this had been said six times, and the protest 
had been five times renewed, Lonsdale rose, and said 
gravely, — 

“Then we must leave your excellency. The trans¬ 
action appears to me much more serious than your 
excellency thinks it. Your excellency claims the 
right to send British subjects secretly to Cuba for 
trial. We resist that right: I say resist , where my 
colleague said protest. I ought to inform your ex¬ 
cellency, that I sent directions this morning to his 
Britannic Majesty’s naval officer in command below 
the Pass. That officer will search every vessel com- 


432 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

ing down the river, and will rescue any British subject 
he finds on board, though that subject be on a ship- 
of-war of the King of Spain.” 

There was a moment’s silence. Governor Salcedo 
himself did not maintain the haughty look of in¬ 
difference which he had pretended. He looked 
Lonsdale steadily and anxiously in the eye. Laussat 
pretended not to hear what was said. The secre¬ 
taries prepared four copies for the king. 

“ And will the American squadron look for Ameri¬ 
can citizens?” said the governor at last with a sneer. 

“ I think there are no American vessels of war 
there,” replied Lonsdale quietly. “ If they were, 
Mr. Clark would communicate with them, I suppose.” 

“And how does your order, Mr. Lonsdale, affect 
the persons who as you say are our prisoners; for 
whom, observe, I disclaim all responsibility?” 

“Your excellency cannot mistake me. Silas Perry 
and Seth Ransom are both subjects of George the 
Third.” 

“ The American consul has claimed them as Ameri¬ 
can citizens,” said the governor in excitement. “ And 
you must pardon me, Mr. Lonsdale: your ignorance 
is that of a stranger; their nationality is perfectly 
known here. No person so important in the 
American interest, always excepting the honorable 
consul, as Mr. Silas Perry; unless, indeed, Senor 
Ransom’s claim is superior to his, as he certainly 
supposes it to be.” 

“I speak of facts,” replied Lonsdale, — “facts 
everywhere known. These men were born British 
subjects. It is true that the State of Massachusetts, 


or, Show your Passports 433 

in which they were born, is no longer a part of the 
British Empire; but these men, born under the flag 
of England, were not residents of Massachusetts 
when that change took place. They have never 
forfeited their allegiance to the King of England, 
nor his protection. They are under the English 
flag to-day.” 

Everybody was amazed at this bold position so 
suddenly assumed by this calm man. For a moment 
there was silence. Then the governor said, — 

“ It is too late to-day; but, if the men can be 
found in this jurisdiction, we will learn from them 
to what nation they belong.” 

“And when shall we have this privilege,” asked 
Mr. Lonsdale boldly, “ of seeing the prisoners, who, 
as I had understood, were not known by your ex¬ 
cellency to be imprisoned?” 

“ To-morrow is Sunday,” said the governor with 
equal coolness. “ I understand that it will be dis¬ 
agreeable to Englishmen and Americans to attend 
to business then. Shall we say Tuesday?” 

“ No day better than Sunday for an act of the 
simplest justice,” said Lonsdale. 

The governor had committed himself; and it was 
agreed that after mass the same party should meet 
again. 

And then the English and American gentlemen 
were bowed out of the room; and the four clerks 
completed their four memoirs for the king. 


28 



434 


Philip Nolan’s Friends; 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 

WHAT NEXT? 

“ To-morrow is behind.” — Dryden. 

That night was an eventful night in the little Ameri¬ 
can “ colony.” Daniel Clark’s magnificent mansion, 
the consulate and its dependent offices, Davis’s rope- 
walk on Canal Street, and, indeed, every vessel in 
the stream, had its great or little consultation of 
outraged and indignant men. It was not the first 
time in which the handful of Americans in Orleans 
had had to consult together as to their mutual pro¬ 
tection. We have still extant the little notes which 
Daniel Clark from time to time sent up to General 
Wilkinson, who commanded the American army, 
and whose quarters were as near as Fort Adams 
in Mississippi, arranging for the co-operation of 
the Americans within and the Americans without 
when the time should come. And the army was 
not unwilling to make the dash down the river. 
It was held in the leash not too easily. Constant 
Freeman and other tried officers knew to a pound 
the weight of those honeycombed guns on the Span¬ 
ish works; they longed to try a sharp, prompt 
escalade against those rotten palisades; and there 
was not a man of them but was sure that the hand¬ 
ful of Franco-Spanish troops would give way in 
half an hour before that resolute rush, when it 
should be made, Whether, indeed, the gates were 


or, Show your Passports 435 

not first opened by the two hundred insulted and 
determined Americans within, would be a question. 

It was all a question of time, for the two or three 
years of which this story has been telling. The 
Americans within the city were always believing 
that the time had come. General Wilkinson was 
always patting them on the back, and bidding them 
keep all ready, but to wait a little longer. Recent 
revelations in the archives of Spain have made that 
certain which was then only suspected, that this 
man was at the same time in the regular pay of 
the King of Spain and of the Government of the 
United States. There is therefore reason to doubt 
how far his advice in this matter was sincere. But, 
as the end has proved fortunate, a good-natured 
people forgets the treason. 

They would abide the decision of the governor 
and the prefect, to be rendered the next day. If 
then the prisoners were not surrendered, why, that 
meant war. After the counsels of this night, the 
Americans were determined. A messenger should 
be sent up the river in a canoe; and, lest the water- 
guard arrest him, Will Harrod should go up by land 
through the Creek country. Harrod did not decline 
the commission, though he preferred to remain with¬ 
in, where, as he believed, would be the post of dan¬ 
ger. So soon as the consultation was ended, he 
hurried to Mr. Perry’s house to tell the ladies such 
chances as the meeting gave. But he was too late 
for them that evening. 

It was in the loveliness of early morning the next 
day, with every rose at its sweetest, every mocking- 


436 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

bird vying with its fellow, every magnolia loading the 
air with its rich perfume, that the brave fellow came 
running down into the garden, and found Inez there. 
He told her hastily what was determined, and that 
the wishes of these gentlemen, which he must regard 
as commands, compelled him to leave her and her 
aunt, just at the time, of all times, when he wanted 
to be nearest to them. 

“ Dear Inez,” he said boldly, “ you know that I 
would not move from your side but in the wish to 
serve you. You know that I have no thought, no 
wish, no prayer in life, but that I may serve you. 
You do not know that, for two years and more, 
I have thought of you first, of you last, of you al¬ 
ways ; that there is no wish of my heart, nay, no 
thought of my life, but is yours, — wholly yours. I 
should die if I were to part from you without say¬ 
ing this; and I wish, my dear Inez, that you would 
let me say a thousand times more.” 

He had never called her Inez, of course, without 
that fatal “ Miss ”; far less, of course, had he ever 
called her “ dear.” 

But the gallant fellow had resolved, that come 
what might, and let Inez say what she may, he 
would call her “dear Inez” once, if he died for it. 
Now he had made a chance to do so twice before 
he let her answer. And so he waited bravely for 
her reply. 

Poor Inez! 

She looked up at him, and she tried to smile, and 
the smile would not come. Only her great eyes 
brimmed full of tears, which would not run over. 


or. Show your Passports 437 

She looked down, she turned pale; she knew she 
did, and he saw she did. Still he waited, and still 
she tried to speak. She stopped in their walk, she 
turned resolutely toward him; and now she was 
so pale that he grew pale as she looked up at him. 
And she gave him her hand slowly. 

“I will speak,” she said, almost gasping, that 
she might do so,—“I will speak. Will Harrod, 
dear Will Harrod,” a smile at last, or an effort at 
a smile in all her seriousness, “ I love you better 
than my life.” 

And then she could hardly stand; but there was 
little need. Will Harrod’s arms were round her, and 
there was little danger that she should fall. And 
then they walked up one avenue, and down another, 
and they talked back through one year, and forward 
through another, and tried to recall — yes, and did 
recall — every single ride upon the prairie in those 
happy days, — what he said above the Blanco River, 
and what she said that day by the San Marcos 
Spring ; and if he ought to have thought that that 
cluster of grapes meant anything, and if she remem¬ 
bered the wreath of the creeper; and all the thou¬ 
sand nothings of old happy times, when they dreamed 
so little of what was before them. For one happy 
quarter-hour now, they even forgot the dangers and 
miseries of to-day. 

Yes; and when they came back to them, as back 
they must come, oh, how much more endurable they 
were, and how much more certain was she and was 
he, that all would come out well! If he must go to 
Natchez, why, he must; but no parting now could 


438 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

be so terrible as that other parting, when they did 
not know. 

They went in to join the party at breakfast. Har- 
rod was ready to kiss Inez twenty times in pres¬ 
ence of them all. But Inez was far more proper 
and diplomatic. Still, as she passed her aunt, she 
stooped and kissed her, and said in a whisper, — 

“ Darling aunty, you have not told me your se¬ 
cret, but you are welcome to mine.” 

And happier than any queen, she went through 
the pretty ministries of the table ; and Ma-ry knew, 
by intuition, that everything was well. 

Was everything well? That, alas! must be de¬ 
cided at the formal hearing of the afternoon, when 
the prisoners were to be brought forward, “if they 
could be found within this jurisdiction.” 

It proved, as might be expected, that they “ could 
be found,” although, to the last, the governor and his 
son and the intendant had said, and the prefect had 
intimated, that they would not acknowledge that they 
knew anything about either of them. 

“ It is all like Pontius Pilate, and Herod, and 
Annas the high-priest,” said Asaph Huling. “ Shift' 
ing and shirking, and only agreeing in lying! ” 

So soon as the consuls and Mr. Lonsdale and 
Harrod had appeared, and made their compliments, 
the governor’s son nodded, and a sort of orderly 
disappeared. In a moment Ransom entered, and, 
in a moment more, Silas Perry on the other side. 
Ransom’s beard had grown, and his clothes were 
soiled ; evidently none of the elegances of hospitality 


or. Show your Passports 439 

had been wasted upon him; but he was fully master 
of the position; he came in as if he were directing 
the policemen who brought him ; he bowed civilly to 
Mr. Huling, to Mr. Hutchings, to Mr. Harrod, and to 
Mr. Lonsdale; but, as for the prefect and the gov¬ 
ernor, they might as well have been statues in the 
decoration. He took a seat, and the seat which 
was intended, by a sort of divine instinct, and sat, as 
if he were the lord high chancellor, before whom all 
these people had been summoned. 

Silas Perry was neatly dressed, and had not, in 
fact, been left to suffer personal indignity or in¬ 
convenience: but he was pale and nervous; he 
seemed to Lonsdale ten years older than when he 
saw him last. 

Harrod had never seen him before; but Mr. Perry’s 
delight at seeing Ransom reassured him. “ Are you 
here, my dear Ransom,” said he, “and what for? I 
thought they had thrown you into the river.” 

The secretaries hastily wrote down for the king’s 
information the fourfold statement that Don Silas 
had supposed that the major-domo Ransom had 
been thrown into the river. 

“ Donno, sir,” replied Ransom in a lower tone. 
“ Had me up three times, cos they wanted to hear 
the truth told 'em, for a kind of surprise, you know. 
Donno what they want now.” 

“Then you are a prisoner too, Ransom? ” 

“Guess I be. Darbies knocked off, jest afore I 
come upstairs.” 

And Ransom looked curiously at both windows, 
as one who should inquire how easy it might be to 


440 Philip Nolan's Friends ; 

break these two governors’ heads together by one 
sudden blow, and, with one leap, emancipate him¬ 
self from custody; but he had no serious thought 
of abandoning the company he was in. 

The governor tapped impatiently; and a kind of 
major-domo with a black gown on, who had not been 
present the day before, came and told Ransom to be 
silent. Mr. Perry told him the same thing, and he 
obeyed. 

“We have no necessity for any formal investiga¬ 
tions,” said the governor, in a courtly conversational 
manner, which he was proud of. “ I had almost said 
we are all friends. Many of us are. I hope Don 
Silas recognizes me as one. But all purposes will be 
best answered if Don Silas will mention to these gen¬ 
tlemen his name, his age, and his nationality.” 

Lonsdale shuddered. If the Yankee should say, 
“ Silas Perry, age sixty-two, an American citizen,” 
he would be out of court. But Mr. Perry answered 
firmly, — 

“ I should like to know where I am. If this is a 
court, I demand to know what I am tried for.” 

“Indeed this is no court, my dear friend,” said the 
courtly governor: “we have met, at the request 
of these gentlemen, for a little friendly conversa¬ 
tion.” 

“ Then I hope these gentlemen and your excellency 
will converse,” said Mr. Perry bitterly. “ I have al¬ 
ways found I profited more by listening than by 
talking.” 

“You do yourself injustice, Don Silas. We had a 
question here yesterday which only you, it seems, can 


or, Show your Passports 441 

answer. These gentlemen, in fact, asked for your 
presence, that we might obtain satisfaction.” 

“ If I am to obtain any,” said Perry, undaunted, “ I 
must know whether I am a prisoner here to be bad¬ 
gered, or a freeman permitted to go at large. As a 
freeman, I will render any help to these gentlemen or 
to your excellency, as I always have done loyally, as 
your excellency has more than once acknowledged 
to me. As a prisoner, I say nothing, — no, not even 
under a Spanish examination.” 

This with a sneer, which the governor perfectly 
comprehended. 

“ You ask,” said he, “ precisely the question which 
you are here to answer; or, rather, the answer may 
be said to depend upon your answer to my friend 
here. The American consul here is claiming your 
person as an American citizen. The British consul 
intervenes, and, as I understand the matter, claims 
you as a subject of George the Third. It is impos¬ 
sible for us here even to consider their claims, till 
we know in what light you hold yourself.” 

“Ia subject of George the Third ! ” cried Perry 
incredulously. “I did not think George the Third 
himself was crazy enough to say that; and I believe 
his Majesty has heard my name.” 

But, at the moment, he caught Lonsdale’s eager 
and imploring eye. Lonsdale waved in his hand a 
card ; and Silas Perry was conscious, for the first mo¬ 
ment, that he also held one. Ransom had slipped it 
into his hand, as he rose to address the governor; 
but till now he had not looked at it. He paused 
now, and read what was written on it. 


442 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

“ I have claimed you as a British subject. The English 
fleet is off the Pass, and will take you off if you admit the 
claim. Ransom too. The governor is afraid. Take our 
protection. — Lonsdale.” 

Silas Perry read the card, nodded good-humoredly 
to Lonsdale; and while the governor, amazed at 
the manifest deceit which had been practised, 
hesitated what to say, Mr. Perry himself took the 
word. 

“ I can relieve your excellency of any question. I 
am a citizen of the United States. I was born in 
Squam, in Massachusetts, in the year 1741. When I 
was twenty-one years of age I removed to the Havana. 
With every penny of my purse and every throb of 
my heart, I assisted in that happy revolution which 
separated those colonies from the British crown. 
And lest, by any misfortune, my children should be 
regarded subjects either of George the Third or of 
Charles the Third on my first visit to England after 
the peace, at the American embassy, I renounced all 
allegiance to the King of England and obtained the 
certificate of my American nationality from that man 
who has since been the honored President of my 
country. So much for me. 

“With regard to this good fellow, I presume the 
consul is technically right. Seth Ransom was born 
a subject of George the Third. He did not reside 
in the United States when the treaty of peace was 
made; nor has he resided there since. He is un¬ 
doubtedly, at law, a subject of the King of England.” 

So saying, Silas Perry sat down The four secre- 


or, Show your Passports 443 

taries provided four transcripts for the gratification 
of their king. 

“ How is this? ” said the governor himself, turning 
to Ransom. “ Have you understood what the gen¬ 
tleman has said? ” 

Seth Ransom had been contemplating the ceiling, 
still in the character of the lord chancellor. 

“ Understood all I wanted to,” said he. “ Perhaps 
you did n’t understand, cos he spoke English. Ef 
you like, I ’ll put it in Spanish for you.” 

For, as it happened, the etiquettes of yesterday 
had not been observed. The parties had begun with 
English: with English they went on. But Ransom, 
for his own purposes, now changed the language. 

“You can ask me what you please,” said he. 
“ But, if you have not sent the king the other 
things I told you, you might read them over; for 
I shall tell you the same thing now.” 

The governor turned up the record of Ransom’s 
first examination. He then said, with a sneer,— 

“ This reads: ‘ Seth Ransom, being questioned, 

states that he is a citizen of Massachusetts, one of the 
United States of America.’ But I understand Don 
Silas that this is a mistake, and that we are to say 
that you are a subject of King George the Third.” 

“ You can say what you like,” said Ransom fiercely, 
in a line of Castilian wholly his own, which was, how¬ 
ever, quite intelligible to the governor, and the four 
secretaries who toiled after. “ You know as well as I 
know that whatever you say will be a lie, and if you 
say that, it will be the biggest lie of all.” 

Ransom spoke hastily, and in his most lordly air of 



444 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

defiance, but not so hastily but they could all follow 
him; and the secretaries noted his language in such 
short-hand as they could command. 

Mr. Hutchings, the English consul, availed himself 
here of the pretence that they were conversing as 
friends in the governor’s office, and that none of the 
forms of court were observed. 

“ Ransom,” said he, “ all that we want to prove is 
that you never appeared before a magistrate and 
made oath of your citizenship. Of course we all 
know where you were born.” 

Ransom listened superciliously, with one eye still 
turned to the heavens. 

“You don’t want me to be lying too, Mr. Hutch¬ 
ings. Them eyedolaters do, cos it’s their way. But 
you don’t.” 

And he paused, as if for reflection and for recol¬ 
lection. 

Lonsdale took courage from the pause to say, — 

“ Of course, the king’s officers have no claim on 
you; but we are all friends now, and all the king’s 
officers want is a right to befriend you.” 

A bland smile crept over Ransom’s face. 

“ Much obliged,” said he: “ they’s befriended me 
afore now.” 

Then, as if this “ solemn mockery ” had gone far 
enough, he turned to the governor, and said, again 
in Spanish, — 

“I will tell you all about it. When the war began, 
General Washington wanted powder, — he.wanted it 
badly; and he said to old Mugford that he’d better 
go down the bay, and catch some English store-ships 


or, Show your Passports 445 

for him. And I volunteered under Mugford, and 
went down with him. And we took the powder, 
and drove those fellows out of Boston.” 

The Castilian language furnished Ransom with 
some very happy epithets —as terms of reproach, 
not to say contumely — with which to speak of the 
English navy and army. 

The secretaries, amazed, wrote down this ridicule 
of a king. 

“ After Mugford was killed, I went out again,— 
first with Hopkins, and then with Manly. And, the 
first time, I went to Hopkins’s shipping-office, down 
at Newport; and I swore on the Bible that I’d never 
have anything more to do with George the Third, 
nor any of that crew, — poor miserable sons of 
dogs as they were; and, when I went with Manly, I 
shipped at old Bill Coram’s office, and he had a Bible 
too, and I swore the same thing again.” 

Of all which the secretaries made quadruplicate 
narrative. 

“ That time his fellows caught us,” continued Ran¬ 
som, pointing over his shoulder at Lonsdale. “ We 
were under the Bermudas, waiting for the Jamaica 
fleet; and there came a fog, and the wind fell; and, 
when the fog rose, I ’ll be damned if we were not 
under the guns of a seventy-four, — the * Charlotte; ’ 
and they boarded us, and carried every man to Eng¬ 
land. And that’s the only time I ever ate his bread,” 
— pointing again to Lonsdale, — “ black stuff, and 
nasty it was too. That was at Plymouth. 

“ I lived there a year. And once every month a 
miserable creature in a red coat — one of his fellows 


446 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

— came and asked us to take service in the king’s 
navy. And there were some dirty Spanish and 
Portuguese, and niggers [this in English], — lying 
dogs, all of them, — that did. But all the Ameri¬ 
cans told him to go to hell, and I suppose he went 
there, because I have never seen him since. 

“ And at last there was an exchange, — exchanged 
a thousand of us against a thousand of his fellows 
we had. Poor bargain he made too ! And that time 
they took me over to France; and they made me 
captain of the squad, because I could speak their 
lingo, — the same as I speak yours, because you 
do not know any better. And there we saw the 
man that told the King of France what he ’d better 
do, — same man that fixed the lightning-rod on 
Boston Light. King George did not know how. 
King fixed it wrong, — did everything wrong.” 

The secretaries, amazed, entered these statements 
on King George’s knowledge of electricity. 

“White-haired old man he was,—long-haired man, 

— sort of a Quaker; and he came and asked all that 
were Americans to come to his place, and take the 
oath. So I took it there, — that’s three times. And 
he gave me my certificate, — ‘ purtection ’ they call 
it,”—turning to the secretaries to give them the 
word in English, — “and when any of his men — 
the king’s, I mean — see that, why, they can’t take 
a fellow out of any ship at all. And there it is: if 
you think your king would like to know what it says, 
I’ll read it to you. I always keep it by me; and 
these fellows of yours, when they stole everything 
else I had the day you sent them after me, they 


or. Show your Passports 447 

did n’t find it, because I did not choose to have 
them. You’d better tell that to the king. Tell 
him they are all fools, and good for nothing.” 

By this time Ransom was worked into a terrible 
passion. He still commanded himself enough, how¬ 
ever, to hold the precious paper out, and to read in 
English, — 


“KNOW ALL MEN, 


By these presents , that Seth Ransom, of Tatnuck, Worcester 
County, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the 
United States of America, hath this day appeared before 
me, and renounced all allegiance to all kings and powers, 
save to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and, in es¬ 
pecial, all allegiance to King George the Third, his heirs 
and successors. 

“ And the said Seth Ransom hath hereby given to him 
THE PROTECTION of the United States of America in 
all and every of his legal enterprises by sea or by land, of 
which these presents are the certificate. 

“ Signed, 

“ Benjamin Franklin, 

“ Minister of the United States. 


“ Witness, 

“ William Temple Franklin, 

“Passy, near Paris, June 16, 1781.” 


Ransom knew the paper by heart. He read it 
as an orator — with some break-down on the long 
words. 

This short address produced no little sensation. 
Two secretaries crossed to take the paper to copy it. 
Ransom stepped forward to give it to them, stumbled 


448 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

and fell as he did so. When he rose, he apologized, 
— affected to have given it to one of the men; they 
were in turn almost persuaded each that the other had 
it. Between the three, the paper could be nowhere 
found; and Ransom cursed them with volumes of 
rage because they had stolen it so soon. 

“ Have you any further inquiries to make, Mr. 
Hutchings? or have you, Mr. Lonsdale?” asked 
the governor, addressing the English gentlemen with 
his courtly sneer. 

Before they could reply, Ransom rose again, and 
waved his hand. Like Lockhart before the Red 
Comyn, he seemed resolved to “ make sicker.” 

“Beg your pardon,” said he in English: “I forgot 
to say that I know you want to hang me; I knew 
that the first day you shut me up there. Ef you 
think anybody’s forgotten how t’other one—the 
Paddy governor — hung them French gentlemen, 
it’s because you think we’s all fools. None on ’em’s 
forgot it. O’Reilly, the other one, died screamin’ 
and howlin’ in his bed, because he see the French¬ 
men all round his room pointin’ at him. You know 
that as well as I do. Now you’d better hang me. 
After you’ve hanged me, you can think up a pack 
of lies, and send ’em to the king to tell him what 
you hanged me for.” 

And then the old man sat down with a benignant 
smile. His happy allusion was to that most horrible 
judicial murder committed in the last century, of 
which he had spoken to Inez. For generations 
the memory of that horror did not die out in the 
colony. It was the very last subject which Salcedo 


or, Show your Passports 449 

would willingly hear alluded to; and this old Ransom 
knew perfectly well: for that reason he chose it for 
his last words. 

After a ghastly pause, Salcedo said again, with 
some difficulty, —• 

“ Have you any further inquiries to make, gentle¬ 
men? ” 

“ I have only to protest, in all form,” said the 
plucky English consul, “ against a transaction which 
strikes at the root of all commerce among nations. I 
shall report the whole business to the Foreign Office, 
and I know that it will meet the severe censure of 
the king.” 

The governor bowed. He turned to Mr. Huling: — 

“ Have you any remarks to offer?” 

“ I make the same protest which my clerk made 
yesterday.” 

And he read it, as it had been put on paper. He 
added,— 

“ I assure your excellency, in that friendship to 
which your excellency referred just now, that no act 
could be so fatal to friendly relations for the future. 
Let me read to your excellency from the debate in 
the Senate of the United States of the 23d of Feb¬ 
ruary last. I received the report only last evening. 
The Secretary of State instructs me to lay it before 
your excellency; and I am to say that the Adminis¬ 
tration has the utmost difficulty in restraining the 
anger and ardor of the country. If your excellency 
will note the words used in debate, they mean simply 
war. It is to fan the flames of such anger that your 
excellency orders our friends sent to Cuba for trial; ” 
29 


450 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

and he read from the warlike speeches of White and 
Breckenridge. 

The governor listened with courtly indifference. 
When Mr. Huling had done, and handed the papers 
to a secretary, the governor said contemptuously to 
that officer, — 

“ You need not trouble yourself. His Majesty has 
read that debate three weeks ago: at least I have; I 
have no doubt he has.” 

Laussat, the French prefect, bowed, and took the 
papers. He read them with an interest which belied 
the contempt affected by the other. 

All parties sat silent, however. The evident deter¬ 
mination of the governor to yield no point made it 
difficult to re-open the discussion. 

William Harrod was the first to speak. With no 
training for diplomacy, and no love for it, he rose 
abruptly, and took his hat. 

“ I understand your excellency to declare war 
against the United States: in that case, I have no 
place here.” 

“You will understand what you choose, young 
man,” said the governor severely. “ I have never 
understood why you appeared here at all; and I do 
not even now know why I do not arrest you for con¬ 
tempt of His Most Catholic Majesty.” 

“ Let me ask,” said Lonsdale, “ if your excellency 
will not consent to some delay in the measures 
you propose toward our friends, — a communication 
home, or with the city of Washington?” 

“ I have already said, Senor Lonsdale, that the offi¬ 
cers of the King of Spain do not call councils of 


or, Show your Passports 451 

foreign powers to assist them in their administration 
of justice.” 

Lonsdale bowed, did not speak again, but took his 
hat also, very angry. At this moment, however, to 
the undisguised surprise even of the oldest diplo¬ 
matists in the group, their number was enlarged, as a 
footman ushered into the room Roland Perry. He 
was well known to all there, excepting the French 
prefect Laussat and Harrod. He was dressed from 
head to foot in leather, and the leather was very 
muddy. His face was rough with a beard which had 
seen no razor for a fortnight, and was burned brown 
by a fortnight’s sun and air. He held in his hand the 
sombrero which he had just removed, and a heavy 
riding-whip. He crossed the room unaffectedly to 
the governor, and gave him his hand. 

“ Your excellency must excuse my costume, but I 
am told that my despatches require haste.” 

He turned to his father: — 

“ My dear father, I am so glad to see you ! you 
must have been anxious about my disappearance,” 
and he kissed him. 

He shook hands cordially with the consuls and 
with Lonsdale. He offered his hand to Harrod: — 

“ It is Mr. Harrod, I am sure.” 

He bowed to all the secretaries, and to Salcedo’s 
son. He shook hands cordially with Ransom. Then, 
turning to the governor with the same air of confident 
command, as if really everybody had been waiting 
for him, and nothing could be done until he came: — 

“Will you do me the honor to present me to the 
prefect — Monsieur Laussat, I believe? ” 


452 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

The governor, chafing a little at this freedom, did as 
he was asked, reserving for some other moment the 
rebuke he was about to give to this impudent young 
gentleman. 

Laussat hardly understood the situation. But he 
had learned already that the etiquettes of America 
were past finding out. 

“ I had the honor of meeting your excellency at 
the house of Citizen La Place,” said Roland ; “ but I 
cannot expect that your excellency would remember 
such a youngster. I hope your excellency left the 
Baroness of Valcour in good health, and your excel¬ 
lency’s distinguished father.” 

Laussat also postponed the snubbing he was about 
to administer, not certain but he was snubbed himself 
already. 

Roland, with the same infinite coolness, turned to 
the governor, who was trying to collect himself. 
Roland opened a large haversack, very muddy, which 
had hung till now from his shoulder. 

“ This despatch, your excellency, is from Senor 
Yrujo, the Spanish minister at Washington. I left 
him only a fortnight Thursday. His excellency bids 
me assure your excellency of his most distinguished 
consideration. And this despatch, Citizen Laussat, is 
from the French minister. I am charged with his 
compliments to you.” 

This use of the word “ citizen,” which was already 
out of vogue, was necessary to Roland’s consummate 
air of superiority over the braggart Frenchman. 

“ And now, gentlemen, as I see these despatches 
are long, will you excuse my father, and my old 


or, Show your Passports 453 

friend Ransom here, to both of whom I have much to 
say? Your excellency does not know that it is nearly 
a year since we have met.” 

This outrage was more than the “ moribund old 
man” could stand. 

“You are quite too fast, Mr. Perry. I know very 
well when you went up the river to foment war in 
Kentucky. I know very well that you failed, and 
went to Washington on the same errand. I know 
that these despatches will tell me of your further 
failure. If you wish to converse with your father, it 
will be in this palace, where I will provide accommo¬ 
dations for both of you.” 

“ Your excellency is very kind,” said the young 
man with infinite good-humor. “When your excel¬ 
lency and Citizen Laussat have read these papers, 
you will perhaps think it better to accept my father’s 
hospitality than to offer him yours.” 

Then, as if such badinage had gone far enough, he 
turned with quite another air to Laussat: — 

“ Monsieur Laussat,” he said, with an air of 
an equal, “this diplomacy has gone far enough. 
Orleans and Louisiana are in fact, at this very mo¬ 
ment, a part of the United States. The First Consul 
has sold them to the President for a large and suffi¬ 
cient compensation. Nothing remains but the formal 
act of cession.” 

“Impossible!” cried Laussat, starting from his 
seat. “ My despatches say nothing of it.” 

“ I know not what they say,” said the young man, 
“ and I do not care. Perhaps you will do me the 
favor to look at mine*” 


454 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

He took from his pocket a billet, which, as he 
showed to the prefect, was written at Malmaison, with 
the stamp of the First Consul’s cabinet on the corner. 
It was in the handwriting of Madame Bonaparte, — a 
playful note thanking Roland for the roses he had 
sent her. The young man turned the first page 
back, and pointed to a postscript on the last page, in 
the cramped writing, not so well known then as now, 
of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

The words were these : — 

My dear Son, — We speak of you often, and we wish you 
were in France. Say to your honored father, who knows 
how to keep a secret, that I have sold Louisiana to Mr. 
Monroe. He well knows my friendship to America: let 
this prove it to him again. He will use this note with 
discretion. Health, 

Buonaparte. 

25 Germinal. Year XI. 

The prefect read them, and read them again. 
“ Lache, imbecile, traitre /” he said, between his 
teeth, as he gave back the note to Roland. 

“ Your excellency may be curious to see the First 
Consul’s autograph,” said Roland; and he handed 
the little billet to the governor in turn. The gov¬ 
ernor read it as Roland stood by; but, as he was 
about to give it to the secretaries, Roland put it in 
his pocket. 

“ Your excellency will pardon me. It is my note 
— and a note from a lady. 

“And now,” he said, in that quiet tone of com¬ 
mand which became him so well, which he had in¬ 
herited from his father, “ as among friends, we must 


or. Show your Passports 455 

confess that this kind announcement from the First 
Consul puts a new arrangement on all our little affairs 
in this room. Your excellency will perhaps permit 
my father to dine at home; and I think Ransom will 
find us some good sherry in which to drink prosper¬ 
ity to France and to Spain.” 

But the “ moribund old man ” sat with his head 
upon his breast, pondering. This was the end, then, 
of Phil Nolan’s murder; this was the end of Elgue- 
zebal’s watchfulness; this the end of interdicts and 
protests, and all the endless restrictions of these 
weary years. God be with Mexico and Spain! 

He said nothing. 

Roland turned to Laussat: “ Will your excellency 
not use your influence with the governor?” he said. 

Laussat looked the fool he was, but said nothing. 

The English and American gentlemen rose. “ I 
am to report, then, to Lord Hawksbury,” said Lons¬ 
dale, “ that the Spanish Government is indifferent to 
the friendship of England.” He took his hat again, 
as to withdraw. 

“ I am to write to Madame Bonaparte,” said Roland 
Perry, “ that M. Laussat says the First Consul is a 
coward, an imbecile, and a traitor. Gentlemen, we 
seem to have our answers.” 

The poor old governor raised his head. “ I shall 
be glad of a little conference with his excellency the 
prefect, our friend M. Laussat. Will you gentlemen 
await us in the next salon?” 

They waited fifteen minutes. At the end of fifteen 
minutes Mr. Perry and Ransom joined them. There 
was a civil message of excuse from the governor, but 


456 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

he did not appear; nor was Laussat visible through 
the day. 

And so they left the governor’s house in triumph. 
Roland Perry could hardly come close enough to his 
father. He assured himself that he was well, and 
then his first questions were for news from Texas. 
Had Caesar been set free? Had any of Phil Nolan s 
party returned? 

No; but Barelo had good hopes. The trials were 
proceeding with infinite slowness; but Barelo and all 
men of sense hoped still that Spanish honor would be 
vindicated, and these men, who had certainly enlisted 
in faith in De Nava’s pass, would be set free, — a 
hope alas! not to be verified/ 


1 A regular trial was given them, of which the proceedings are ex¬ 
tant. Don Pedro Ramos de Verea conducted the defence (will not 
some Texan name a county for him ?), and the men were acquitted. 
The judge, De Vavaro, ordered their release, Jan. 23, 1804; but 
Salcedo, alas! was then in command of these provinces: he counter¬ 
manded the decree of acquittal, and sent the papers to the king. The 
king, by a decree of Feb. 23, 1807, ordered that one out of five of 
Nolan’s men should be hung, and the others kept at hard labor for 
ten years. Let it be observed that this is the royal decree for ten 
men who had been acquitted by the court which tried them. 

When the decree arrived in Chihuahua, one of the ten prisoners, 
Pierce, was dead. The new judge pronounced that only one of 
the remaining nine should suffer death, and Salcedo approved 
this decision. 

On the 9th of November, therefore, 1807, the adjutant-inspector, 
with De Verea, the prisoner’s counsel, proceeded to the barracks, 
where they were confined, and read the king’s decision. A drum, a 
glass tumbler, and two dice were brought, the prisoners knelt before 
the drum, and were blindfolded. 

Ephraim Blackburn, the oldest prisoner, took the fatal glass and 


dice, and threw 3 and 1.=4 

Lucian Garcia threw 3 and 4 .,,.,==7 




or. Show your Passports 


457 


CHAPTER XXXIX 

A FAMILY DINNER 

“ Thus for the boy their eager prayers they joined, 
Which fate refused, and mingled with the wind.” 

Iliad. 

As the little procession passed along the streets, there 
was almost an ovation offered to Mr. Perry and to 
Ransom. From every warehouse and residence some 
one ran out to felicitate them. Indeed, the mer¬ 
chants of every nation had felt that here was a com¬ 
mon cause; and Silas Perry was so universally 


Joseph Reed threw 6 and 5.=11 

David Fero threw 5 and 3. =8 

Solomon Cooley threw 6 and 5.=n 

Jonah [Tony] Walters threw 6 and 1.=7 

Charles King threw 4 and 3.=7 

Ellis Bean threw 4 and 1.=5 

William Dowlin threw 4 and 2. =6 


Poor Blackburn, having thrown the lowest number, was hanged on 
the nth of November. 

Ellis Bean afterward distinguished himself in the revolt against 
Spain, which freed Mexico. 

Caesar had got detached from the party, and was seen by Pike, high 
up on the Rio Grande. 

Of the end of the life of the other prisoners, no account has been 
found. 

We owe these particulars to the very careful researches in Monterey 
of Mr. J. A. Quintero, who has taken the most careful interest in the 
fame of Philip Nolan. 

People who are fond of poetical justice will be glad to know that 
Salcedo was exiled in the first effort for Texan liberty in 1813. But 
so, alas ! was Herrara. 









458 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

respected that his release was a common victory. 
Roland walked on one side of his father, and Lons¬ 
dale on the other, while Harrod renewed his old ac¬ 
quaintance with Ransom. Ransom confessed to him 
that of all the strange events of the day his appear¬ 
ance had surprised him most. For, if there were 
anything regarding which Ransom had expressed 
himself with confidence for two years past, it was 
the certainty that William Harrod had been scalped, 
burned at the stake, and indeed eaten. 

It was necessary to respect the open secret of the 
First Consul’s postscript so far that to no person could 
the result of Mr. Livingston’s negotiation be distinctly 
told. It had, of course, been hoped for and sus¬ 
pected already. In fact, .what with delays in the 
draft of the treaty, and delays in transmission, the de¬ 
finitive intelligence did not arrive till some time later. 
It was convenient for the governor, for his staff, and 
for Laussat and his, to speak slightly of the intelli¬ 
gence. But this was of no account to those who 
knew the truth ; and, as it happened, to all others 
the “ law’s delay ” involved no consequences of 
evil. 

Roland hastily told his story to his father. His 
inquiries regarding Ma-ry, and the communications 
he had to make to the governors of Kentucky, of 
Tennessee, and of the Northwest, had taken him far 
up the River Ohio, and late into the spring. He 
had determined — wisely as it proved — not to 
return with Lonsdale, who had in the mean while 
crossed to Fort Niagara and to Montreal, and then 
had descended the Mississippi. Roland had preferred 


or, Show your Passports 459 

to go to Washington, to make full statement there to 
Mr. Jefferson and his father’s old correspondents of 
the excited condition of Orleans, knowing that he 
could return by sea with more certainty than by 
' land and the river. 

At Washington he had heard the celebrated war 
debate of February. Mr. Jefferson had not received 
him into any close confidence: that was not Mr. 
Jefferson’s way. But he had told him of his hopes 
that Orleans might be bought for the United States; 
and Mr. Madison had bidden him encourage the 
merchants to hold out a little longer. At the 
French legation he was treated more cordially. 
They gave him a welcome which the State Depart¬ 
ment of that day did not know how to give, and late 
one night the French minister sent to him, and 
asked him if he would take his despatches to Laussat 
when he returned. 

“ As it happened,” said Roland, “ I had within the 
hour received this note from Madame Bonaparte. 
Old Turner had brought it to me, riding express 
from Baltimore almost as I have ridden from Tybee. 
A fortunate curiosity had led Turner to carry the 
rose-bushes to Malmaison himself. He was still 
looking at the garden when he was summoned by 
a lackey to the house, was asked who he was, and 
had confided to him Madame Bonaparte’s billet. 
She came into the hall, and gave it to him with 
her own hand, with a sweet smile. Something in 
what she said made Turner think the note was more 
than a compliment. Anyway, he had seen enough 
of Paris, he said. The ‘Lady Martha’ was ready 


460 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

for sea at Bordeaux; and, having his letter, he took 
post-horses, and rode night and day till he came 
there. 

“And then, sir, they made the ‘Lady Martha’ 
spin. Wood and iron never crossed that ocean so 
quickly before. He ran into Baltimore in twenty 
days, heard from Pollock that I was at Washington, 
and came across with this scrap of paper.” 

Roland felt the importance of the message thus in¬ 
trusted to him, so soon as he had read it. To no 
human being in Washington did he dare intrust it; 
and he could not make out, in the few minutes 
he had for trying, whether the French minister 
had received any corresponding intelligence. He 
sent at once to the Spanish legation, to offer to 
carry their despatches to the governor of Louisiana. 
Then he crossed to Baltimore, where the “ Lady 
Martha” had been unloading some oil and wine; 
and, without a minute’s loss of time, she loosed 
from the pier, and went down the bay. 

“ With a spanking breeze we ran,” said the young 
fellow. “ By the time we were off Hatteras it was a 
gale. But old Turner never flinched. Give him his 
due. The next night it was a northeaster, — blew 
like all the furies ! How she walked off! Turner said 
she might run so till I said the word. I never said 
it. Dark it was, — dark as Egypt; wet, cold, even 
snow in that gale. But Turner did not stop her, and 
I did not stop her.” 

“I suppose the light-house at San Augustino 
stopped her,” said his father, laughing. 

“No, sir; but the breakers off Tybee Sound 


or, Show your Passports 461 

stopped her; and there, I am sorry to say, is 
the ‘ Lady Martha,’ or what is left of her, this 
day.” 

“ She could not have run her last in a better 
cause,” said his father warmly. 

“That’s what I said to Turner. We got ashore, 
sir, all safe. I landed with this bag and with no dry 
rag on me. I told an officer we found there, that I 
had government despatches. He mounted me on 
the best horse in Georgia. That beast took me, 
to whom do you think? — to Aunt Eunice’s old 
admirer, General Bowles ; and General Bowles has 
sent me through since, as if I had been a post-rider 
of the First Consul’s. If Aunt Eunice is not kind 
to the general now, she is graceless indeed.” 

Lonsdale could, this time, take the joking for what 
it was worth. They were now at the house. The 
news was in the air, and all the ladies flew to the 
gate to welcome them. 

What a Sunday it was, to be sure ! How much to 
be told publicly, how much to be told privately, how 
much to be explained ! and how many questions to 
be asked, how many mysteries to be solved ! For¬ 
tunately there was very little to be done. Roland 
had come dashing up to the house with the best 
stride of one of General Bowles’s chargers, at a very 
un-Sunday-like pace. 

“ Lucky for you, you were not in Squam,” said his 
father. “All the tithing-men in Essex County would 
have been after you.” 

“ Better after me than before me, my dear father. 
I am not sure whether all Essex County would have 



462 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

overhauled that bright bay whom Zenon is stuffing 
with corn in the stable now.” 

He had flung the rein to Antoine, and rushed into 
the house to hear the amazing tale of the women, 
as to his father’s arrest and Ransom’s. 

“ I was hardly dressed for diplomacy,” said he; 
“ but I thought the sooner I contributed my stock 
of news, the better.” 

“ Certainly,” said Lonsdale: “ you were none too 
soon. We had all played up our last pawns, and the 
governor was implacable.” 

“Casa Calvo will be angry enough,” said Mr. 
Perry, “ when he knows how like an ass Salcedo 
has behaved. But his visit here just now seems 
to be simply one of ceremony.” 

Before dinner was announced, Will Harrod suc¬ 
ceeded in luring Mr. Perry away into the room 
which was called his office, and laying before him, 
with a young man’s eagerness, such claim as he 
had for Inez’s hand. A blundering business he 
made of it, but her father helped him. 

“ My dear boy,” said he, “ this is hardly matter for 
argument. I do not think my girl would have taken 
a fancy to you, had you not been a Christian gentle¬ 
man. More than that, my boy: I fancy you have 
found favor in , her eyes because you are one of 
Philip Nolan’s friends. For me, I have always sup¬ 
posed that some man would want to take a girl 
so lovely to his heart — well, as I took her mother; 
and, if you will only love this child as I loved her, 
why, I can ask nothing more.” 

Ilarrod’s eyes were running over. He could only 


or, Show your Passports 463 

repeat the certainty, which he said two years of con¬ 
stancy had given him a right to proclaim, that Inez 
would be dearer to him than his life. 

Eunice was never known before to apologize for a 
dinner; and never in after-life did she so apologize. 

“ But, Roland, we were so wretched this morning! 
If we had only known you were coming, why, we 
would have killed for you any beast fat enough on 
the place.” 

“And why did you not know, dear aunty? Why 
had you not signal-officers in the Creek country to 
telegraph my coming? Is the general so tardy 
in his attentions? Why, I had but to ask, and the 
finest horses his lieges ever stole were at my com¬ 
mand.” 

Much fun there was, because people were sup¬ 
posing, all through the dinner, that those had met 
who had never met, and that everybody understood 
everything. 

“ One question, Mr. Lonsdale, you will permit 
me to ask,” said Harrod: “ 1 have puzzled myself 
over it not a little. To what good fortune do I 
owe it that you followed me into the governor’s 
den on Thursday? To tell you the truth, I had 
seen you in the street, and had thought you were 
some intendant or other who meant to arrest me. 
I had been dodging all sort of catchpolls for three 
days of disguise.” 

“ You were not far from right,” said Lonsdale 
quizzically. 

Everybody laughed, and looked inquiry. 

“What do you mean?” said the blunt Kentuckian, 




464 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

taking the laugh good-naturedly. “ For really that 
was a great stroke of luck; but for you, I believe we 
should all three be in the Gulf, or near it, at this 
hour.” 

Lonsdale laughed again; and then, in a mock 
whisper across the table, he said,— 

“ I met a man in the street with my best frock-coat 
and waistcoat on, and I followed him to see where 
he was going. He went to the governor’s house, and 
I went too.” 

One scream of laughter welcomed the announce¬ 
ment, and Harrod and Inez laughed loudest of 
any. 

“Woe is me!” she cried. “Woe is me!. I am 
the sinner, as I always am.” And she laughed her¬ 
self into a paroxysm again. “Oh, Mr. Lonsdale, if 
you could have seen him that morning! I turned 
him into Roland’s room, and bade him fix himself 
up; and he has opened the large wardrobe, and 
helped himself to the clothes Roland bade you leave 
there.” 

And the girl screamed with delight at the trans¬ 
formation. 

“And very nice clothes they are,” said Harrod, 
joining in the fun. “And, when Mr. Lonsdale visits 
me in Kentucky, I will replace them with the hand¬ 
somest hunting-suit in the valley. 

“ How was I to know? There were some thread- 
paper things there, which I see now would fit our 
diplomatic friend here; but, for a broad-shouldered 
hunter like me, give me Mr. Lonsdale’s coat and waist¬ 
coat. Indeed, Mr. Roland,” he said, “ I shall patron- 


or, Show your Passports 465 

ize the English tailors. Your French snips do not 
give cloth enough.” 

“ We can make common cause,” said Lonsdale. 
“ The coat and waistcoat fit you so well that I will 
double my orders when I send to London; and, as 
you say, you can bid the Frankfort snips duplicate 
yours when you send there. We will play the two 
Dromios.” 

The little speech was wholly unconscious. So far 
had Lonsdale looked into the future in these two or 
three days, so happy to him, though so anxious to 
all, that he quite forgot that the others had not 
accompanied him in those fore-looks, not Eunice her¬ 
self, from whom he thought he had no secret. 

Quick as light, and pitiless as herself, Inez caught 
the inference, and proclaimed it. She clapped her 
hands, while Eunice first, and Lonsdale in sympathy, 
turned crimson. 

“ Bravo, bravissimo! ” cried the light-hearted girl. 
“The first American citizen adopted in the new State 
of Louisiana is his Royal Highness the Duke of 
Clarence. On the Acadian coast he will establish his 
vineyard for the growth of grapes and the manufac¬ 
ture of malmsey. From a throne on the levee, he 
will rule Great Britain, Ireland, and France, when his 
royal father at length throws off the uneasy crown. 
Mistress Inez Perry will be appointed first lady of 
the robes. But where, oh! where, my dear Aunt 
Eunice, where shall we find him a duchess ? How 
would Mademoiselle Selina de Valois do?” 

“ She will not do at all,” cried Lonsdale; his light 
heart, and the sense of so many victories, conquering 

30 


466 Philip Nolan’s Friends; 

all reticence. “ The Duchess is found ; the throne is 
in building; the coronet is ready in the wardrobe up¬ 
stairs, if the Prince of Kentucky, Cavalier of the Red 
River, and Marshal of the Big Raft, have not needed 
it for purposes of his diplomacy; all that the Duchess 
needs is her brother’s good-will, and — ” 

“ And what?” cried Inez, laughing still. 

“ The presence of her niece as bridesmaid, when 
she gives her hand to ‘The Man I Hate.’” 

And the taciturn and undemonstrative Mr. Lons¬ 
dale, to Ma-ry’s unspeakable delight, waved his fruit- 
knife as if he would scalp Inez, and bear off her 
luxuriant tresses as a trophy. 

The frankness of this bit of by-play was more like 
the style of Sir Charles Grandison’s days than 
Eunice really liked; and Mr. Perry, to relieve her, 
said, — 

“ Nobody has told me how you all knew where I 
was, or where Ransom was.” 

Inez nodded to Ma-ry, and made a sign with her 
hand. 

“May I ?” asked Ma-ry of her grandmother, who 
did not at all understand, and gave assent from the 
mere joyous habit of the day, by accident. 

So Ma-ry sprung from her seat, ran across the 
room, skipped upon a side-table, and there repeated 
the signals which had told where Mr. Perry was shut 
up, and where they should find Ransom. 

Ransom, meanwhile, had honored the occasion as 
he honored few ceremonies in life. He appeared in 
a handsome black coat and breeches, with a white 
necktie. Some footman whom he had seen in Paris, 


or, Show your Passports 467 

in some livery of mourning, may have suggested the 
costume. Eunice might have given a state ball to 
a travelling emperor, and Ransom would not have 
assumed this dress except to please himself. When 
he did assume it, all parties knew that he was entirely 
satisfied with the position. He filled Roland’s glass 
with some of the favorite claret. 

“ Here’s ye father’s own claret, Mr. Roland ; found 
the bin this morning.” 

Then Roland knew that all was sunny. 

“As the governor did not honor us, we need not 
order up the sherry. Indeed, I am not sure that 
Ransom could have found it,” said Mr. Perry, looking 
good-naturedly at the dear old fellow. 

Perhaps Ma-ry’s welcome to Roland had been the 
prettiest of all. Although Mrs. Willson had felt at 
ease with Lonsdale and Eunice, Roland seemed' to 
her the oldest friend of all. It was he who had 
wrought out the whole inquiry; it was he who had 
traced her from village to village, from State to Ter¬ 
ritory, and through him that Eunice had found her, 
and that she had found her darling. And now that 
she saw the sun-browned young fellow the hero of 
the day ; now that he was constantly coming back to 
dear Ma-ry’s side, to ask her this and to tell her that, 
and to praise her for the central service which she 
had rendered to them all, — the old lady felt more at 
ease with him than with Mr. Perry, of whom she was 
afraid; with Mr. Lonsdale, whom she never half 
understood ; nay, even more than with Mr. Harrod, 
the Kentuckian. 

• And Ma-ry! She had gained everything in this 


468 Philip Nolan's Friends; 

year, the young man thought, and she had lost 
nothing. She was a woman now. Yes! but she 
was a lovely girl as well. She could give him both 
her hands; she could look up as frankly as ever in 
his face ; she could talk to him of the thousand new 
experiences of the year ; and yet, in all the simplicity 
of her bearing, there was never one word or gesture 
but the finest lady at a ball at Malmaison might have 
been glad to use. And Ma-ry was not afraid to tell 
him how well he looked, and how glad she was that 
he had come. A long, jolly, home-like dinner: they 
loitered at the table, almost till twilight came. Then 
Eunice said,— 

“ Will it not be pleasanter on the gallery ? I will 
order coffee there.” 

But Roland detained them. 

“ Let me tell you all,” he said, “ what I was telling 

Mr. Harrod. At Fort Washington whom should I 

meet but a fine little fellow, Inez, a good mate for you 

some day, who fascinated me at the very first. He 

had just come over from Frankfort, and had on his 

nice new uniform, his bright shoulder-knots, and his 

new sword. He was a little bit homesick withal. 

* 

Well, I remembered how homesick such a boy feels. 
I asked them to introduce me ; and they introduced 
to me Ensign Philip Nolan.” 

Everybody started. “ Philip Nolan ! ” 

“ Yes, he is the cousin of our dear Phil. Did not 
I want to hug him ? I did tell him more of our 
Philip than he knew. I told him of poor Fanny 
Lintot, and the little baby cousin there.” 

“ One day we will tell him,” said Silas Perry 




or, Show your Passports 469 

solemnly, “ how much the country owes to his 
cousin’s cruel martyrdom. If our brave friend Phil 
Nolan had not gone to Texas, these rascals would 
never have got their terror of the Valley men. It 
was he who taught them how near was Kentucky to 
Potosi. The moment they learned that, they lost 
their heads. 

“ From Phil Nolan came Salcedo’s madness. 

“From their frightened despatches home, came the 
easy gift of all this country to France. 

“ From Salcedo’s madness comes the uprising of the 
Western hunters, and the first real recognition of the 
West by the Congress of America. 

“ Good fellow! in all his wildness, Philip Nolan 
never was afraid. 

“ He has done more for his country than he 
meant. 

“ In all his rashness, he has served her so that she 
can never pay her debt to him. 

“Listen to me, Inez: I shall not live to see this, 
but you and your children will. 

“What Casa Calvo calls Nolan’s mad act has 
given Louisiana to your country: it will give her 
Texas. 

“When the tug comes, you will find that every 
Spaniard dreads the prowess of Philip Nolan’s race, 
and that every Kentuckian remembers the treachery 
of Philip Nolan’s murder. 

“ Poor fellow! how often I have heard him say 
that he did not know what country he served, or what 
;army gave him his commission. 

“This cousin, his namesake, is more fortunate. 




470 Philip Nolan’s Friends 

Ransom, fill the glasses. We will drink this young 
ensign’s health. 

“ To Ensign Philip Nolan, ladies and gentle¬ 
men. May the young man never know what it is 
to be 


“A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY! 



































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